On Wed, 11 Oct 2000 13:41:31 Alvin B. Marcelo wrote: >He said: "All healthcare is local." ... >I expect the same will occur with >medical information systems. The information requirements of end-users >[except those required to be submitted by law] vary widely. > >Acknowldeging this, how then should we approach the work to be done by the >alliance? >Where is the common ground? >alvin Good question, and a question of pre-historic proportions faced by all information scientists and engineers since before the invention of language. (perhaps first posed when intracellular communication protocols were being worked out - no, no, not cell phones -- :->). The answer is flexibility and ease of customization. (with re-use and sharing of resources if possible). Each organization and individual need to be able to use the information system to collect and manage data to answer the specific questions and information needs that they have. It is not possible to anticipate a comprehensive list of all possible data items or prepare answers to questions yet to be posed. I think I used a printing press analogy several months ago in another posting here. It is human to look for panacea in every new technology that comes along. Unfortunately just as perpetual motion is hard to come by, so is an information system that will fulfill all possible information needs from now to eternity. The next best thing, in my view, is to have a system that is less costly and painful to modify over time. Again, the moving-type printing press comes to mind. Sometimes you want to print the Bible, sometimes you want to print a comic book. It sure is painful to have to carve brand new plates for each page of every new book. This is where we are at now with our information systems that require costly re-programming to customize and maintain over time. The OIO is the most "moving-type"/modular medical system so far. We will just have to see whether it will catch-on like the moving-type printing process (after its inventor was bankrupt). Andrew --- Andrew P. Ho, M.D. OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes www.TxOutcome.Org Assistant Clinical Professor Department of Psychiatry, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center University of California, Los Angeles Join 18 million Eudora users by signing up for a free Eudora Web-Mail account at http://www.eudoramail.com
