Once again, sincere thanks for taking this up. I confess that I wanted
other opinions...and I got them!
I am surprised at the consensus that open source in medicine will
coalesce around developer/users. That may seem evident within these
walls, but my suspicion is that it is a little more arguable outside
them. I certainly don't know the answer and don't mean to diss the
physician programmers among us.
Adrian Midgley wrote:
>
> One of our UK developers lectured last year on the topic of putting
> all functions through the browser, and having seen some of his stuff I
> am less unconvinced than I was...
Does this mean that you can see an entirely browser-based EMR down the
line?
> It is easier to teach people to write medical logic modules in an easy
> language than a hard one. If speed turns out to be a problem, then
> code that is running can be reimplemented in assembler or C or
> whatever.
> But there is a lot to be said for making doctors aware of the
> possibility of directly handling their own data, and a C course is not
> the way to start that.
That seems (C-eems ?) to me to be a slightly extreme statement (I know,
pot calling the kettle black and all that). If doctors can slog through
organic chemistry in college, a subject that they will never, ever see
hide nor hair of again in their lives (quickly, how do you synthesize
benzene?), certainly they can learn C and even manage a little data
along the way.
John
