On Tue, 13 Mar 2001 08:24:45 Horst Herb wrote:
...
>Now why would anybody want to use a vastly inferior product that runs only
>on a rather unreliable and insecure platform, capped by the fact that you
>lock yourself into a pay-pay-pay cost spiral when yoou can have a superior
>product for free?
Hi Horst,
Great question! I think you nicely raised an issue that falls into the realm of
psychiatry :-).
Free products (as in free beer) generally do not enjoy the level of marketing that
pay-pay-pay products enjoy. As consistently documented by dissemination research, it
is typically not sufficient to invent/build a superior product.
Thus, although the first step may be to build a superior product, the dissemination
of such a product remains very challenging (even with lots of marketing dollars). The
fact that a product is free taints the selection rationale negatively. This issue is
well-discussed in psychiatry where it is felt that paying the psychiatrist enhances
therapeutic benefit!
Most would agree that the choice of a medical information system should not rest
primarily on price.
Therefore, why not charge a reasonable fee for a superior (open source) medical
information system?
I wonder if Tim Cook <VBG> would agree? Perhaps someone else would be interested in
selling FreePM and put my hypothesis to test.
Cheers,
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
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