On Fri, 28 Apr 2000 Horst Herb wrote:
-- SNIP --
> Here in Australia, one software package dominates the market by about
> 85%. ("Medical Director"). It is bad, and I mean really bad- because it
> looses and misfiles data. It hasn't got even the most basic security /
> integrity precautions, and interoperability does not exist in their
> vocabulary. It never was designed for multiuser networking environments.
> Yet it is the big favourite. Why? The user interface is nice &
> "responsive". It does not slow you down while you work. You simply can't
> do that with a web based interface, at least not with our present
> standards. In my view, a software that keeps loosing/misfiling data is
> worthless, but 85% of the docs (and Oz is one of the countries with the
> highest percentage of computerized GPs according to the statistics) still
> use & prefer (!) it. That's the real world I mean. Not a good world, but
> the only one we have. Now, we can ignore that and keep living in the
> ivory tower high up in the clouds cursing the dumb masses who stubbornly
> refuse to rejoyce about our intellectual produce- or we can roll up our
> sleeves and start working on a real world solution.
Not to seem like a whiner, but I don't recall every saying anything about
wanting docs to "come up" to our level in terms of technical expertise.
Most docs in this country only had computers in their offices to facilitate
medical billing, since the forms here are fairly complex. It seemed like a
lot of work to have to key in an entire patient record to do billing, so
the electronic medical record in private practices was born. Most
physicians could care less about computer systems, but are now being forced
by insurance companies and gov't agencies to use computers for data
interchange.
I think that KISS is the right approach to have on this one, and I agree
with you on that. Your total bashing (it has been bashing, I believe) of
web interfaces is partially justified. Standard HTML is a pain to work with
and is limited in many ways. But everything down to a Palm Pilot can use
the interface. Excuse me for saying this, but you can't really compare
GTK+'s interoperability to HTML. HTML is pretty much a universal language
across computing platforms these days. If you don't want to use it, fine. I
believe that trying to force people into using a subset of the computing
platforms out there will only result in a refusal of the technology. Only
*very* large companies can get away with that.
I agree that select boxes, among other things, are very limited. I've been
trying to get around some of HTML's limitations with refreshes and PHP, but
it doesn't neccesarily mean that I can do it any better than the thousands
upon thousands who have tried before me.
I just ask that you don't dismiss a technology as being unfriendly to
users, etc. Docs, no matter how much you may site their technophobia, still
manage to use the internet, with applications like web-based email. Even
though they are not as complex as a medical package, the interface is easy
enough that they seem to be able to use it with no problems. The problems
with web-based interfaces in medical applications are mainly due to
implementations -- you can get around most of HTML's limitations.
*************************
jeff b
system administrator
university communications
university of connecticut
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
