On Thu, 28 Aug 2003, David Forslund wrote:
> What you say is very important. OIO is basically a very good Content > Management System will suited to the healthcare needs.
Dave, Thanks! I am most interested in your view on OIO's limitations, especially from OpenEMed's perspective. Mapping out the boundaries is the only way to make progress.
> We are using Plone/Zope ourselves. I in no way would want you to change > what you are doing.
On the other hand, I am always looking for opportunities to change what we are doing. :-)
> And graphs are far from everything, but are nice to have for certain > applications.
I think just like Fred's FreeB module, the graphing function is another opportunity for us to compare notes. Your reference to JFreeChart is very helpful.
... > People use JSP/Struts today without knowing any Java, but I can't say > what is a better environment to use.
This Struts example looks pretty complicated: http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/faqs/actionForm.html
Looks like a pretty normal (simple) web page to me. I find the plone/zope stuff
much less easy to comprehend, but this is probably because I'm not familiar with them.
> I do believe that we shouldn't have physicians building web pages.
Why shouldn't everyone, including physicians, be able to build web-pages? Just like everyone "should" learn how to read and write.
Why shouldn't everyone be able to fix their own car? Why shouldn't everyone learn to operate on other people? There is a clear
division of labor and efficiency in people knowing their field. You see books on how to be a C++ expert in 21 days, but
not how to be a brain surgeon in 21 days. I think it is laughable for anyone to think they could be a C++ expert
in 21 days. I think it is a waste of time for a physician to create healthcare-oriented web pages other than providing
the important domain knowledge. That doesn't mean, of course, he can't create a web page through some process that
automates most of the work. That is what content management systems are for.
I remember a physician telling me that he had learned the 21 steps it took to ftp a file
from one site to another. I thought, "What a waste of time".
> Also, any system needs to plug into the wider world to get data, etc.
I agree. Like an web-browser that can be used to query Google.com.
> We need interoperable tools spanning these diverse systems to make this > happen.
I agree.
I think we start small - with Microsoft Office product, then Mozilla, and various URL-accessible applications (e.g. Google). For example, if OIO can query OpenEMed via URL to retrieve a patient record, then OIO and OpenEMed will be one big step closer to being able to interoperate! (or, if you want to do it the other way around, it would be good too.)
This part is trivial to do, but not done today because of HIPAA issues. We provide
Javanbeans to assist in this and they are easily mapped to a web form. OpenEMed
is primarily a back end server system. If the only way servers talk to each other is
through web URLs, I believe we will be left in the stone age as to capabilities that we will leave
behind. Common data models are also critical as well as terminology services.
Have you looked at the concepts behind Service-Oriented Architectures and how services
should be made available on the Internet that can work together to solve a problem?
Dave
Best regards,
Andrew --- Andrew P. Ho, M.D. OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes www.TxOutcome.Org
