On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 20:48, Thomas Beale wrote: > I wouldn't know for most of these but it seems reasonable. My only > comment is that this classification is fine for a sort of maturity index > of software; things like openEHR have a lot of work in the specification > space, shared (pioneered) by OMG HDTF, CEN 13606, HL7 and others, which
You know that I am all for standards, and you are certainly right in many ways. However, the sad reality is that standards in our domain don't work. Very sad. But in a world where you can't even get the some rogue but very influential countries to agree to most sensible standards with straightforward benefits such as adherence to the metric system, what hope is there for health care standards? Corbamed is sensible and fairly complete in the sense that you can implement it here and now and do something useful with it. I know OpenEMED has implemented some, but honestly: hands up how many world wide installations are there of any Corbamed system? So much for Corbamed as a standard. And HL7? It is still a sad joke. Despite it's (probably entirely unnecessary) complexity it still doesnn't fulfill any expectations. I haven't seen yet any two not-inhouse systems that can talk to each other HL7 without need for a home baken translation level. And even then things can go wrong (see the pathology download tragical comedy in Australia). And CEN standards? I'd love to see them work in our domain, but please point me to any significant installations using them. Standards that work nowadays and make everybodies life easier have arisen out of somebody actually "doing something", and the process of becoming a de-facto standard has been helped by either sheer commercial market domination or complete openness. Complex domain specific "standards" developed on the white board and then imposed onto humanity have not often worked well AFAIK. So, once again: I love standards. I wish standards to penetrate our domain thoroughly. But for standards to have any impact on evaluation of actually existing projects they would need to be more meaningful than what we have, and they definitely would need more acceptance than they currently have. Horst
