At 5:05 pm +1100 21/12/05, Horst Herb wrote:
[...]people saying "what you are using is crap, I am sooo much faster using
MDW/Genie/Locum whatever", and others saying the exact opposite - as I said,
people have different workflows and documentation habits, and user
interfaces should reflect these differences by offering a "least common
denominator" default interface with a high level of customizability. I know
of no commercial package doing this or taking such differences into account,
hence it is a good thing we have a variety to chose from, but a very bad
thing that no two programs within this variety play nicely together and could
be employed in parallel in the same practice using the same backend.
Horst
Of course that would be great, but requires at least a standard
interface with the (standard?) back end - which no vendor has an
interest in except Ocean Informatics (Open EHR). Are there examples
of this sort of functionality in the real world - different programs
that can happily talk to the same data?? I can think of lots of
examples of programs and data being inextricably intertwined.
From a user interface perspective, good GUI-based programs tend to
give users several options for achieving the same end - which is a
great way of coping with individual differences in learning and
cognition. For example - menus, buttons, keystroke shortcuts. I don't
think any medical program I've seen has the same sort of user
interface finesse as good general purpose software.
I suspect that an interface with too much customisability creates a
large legacy and a big maintenance problem for the end user - who
then has their own software dead end to manage.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It has been an interesting and lively thread to date. Nearly all the
arguments to date have been emotional/personal/philosophical.
It is wonderful to see a lot of observers chipping in for a change.
We are trying to make a somewhat rational business decision somehow
allowing for:
* bottom line software/support costs
* user re-training being expensive in dollars and productivity
* poor functionality and usability being expensive in productivity
* lack of integration of clinical/practice management/accounting
costing us in business intelligence and therefore profitability
The impression I get is that:
* nobody so far has deeply considered software costs an issue - are
they all equivalent???
* Pete M has given us an impression than MD(2) has higher ongoing
tech support requirements - or could this observation be perhaps
biased by its less technical user base
* transition to MD3 and BP seems a piece of pie for users - based on
interface familiarity
* nearly everybody seems to like what they are presently using -
which is entirely rational!
* people seem to manage living with crashing without a major productivity hit
* one reply suggested that Genie was good for NPCC
Still interested to know the likelihood we will end up wearing SQL
Server licencing fees (for MD3 or BP) and at what cost. From what I
can find, I will need to contact a reseller to get firm pricing in
Australia. (US pricing is on the MS web site.)
I suspect we might be able to live with the 8 concurrent process
governor on MSDE, but will probably blow the 2GB database limit if we
do any scanning (our present MD2 database is about 1GB). Or perhaps
that is why BP has multiple smaller SQL databases???? Will SQL server
licencing costs blow the server cluster idea out of the water
cost-wise? (Was really looking forward to 100% uptime excluding mains
power failures without having to depend on instant response tech
support.)
Ian.
--
Dr Ian R Cheong, BMedSc, FRACGP, GradDipCompSc, MBA(Exec)
Health Informatics Consultant, Brisbane, Australia
Elected Member, GPCG Management Committee
Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(for urgent matters, please send a copy to my practice email as well:
[EMAIL PROTECTED])
PRIVACY NOTE
I am happy for others to forward on email sent by me to public email lists.
Please ask my permission first if you wish to forward private email
to other parties.
_______________________________________________
Gpcg_talk mailing list
[email protected]
http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
