Remember when VHS vs Beta was all the rage. Eventually the winner became the standard. You could rent any VHS from an video store and play it across a thousand different brands of the same dang VCR.
The Bailout #3 has in it $20 billion dollars for health care IT. Great. $20 billion dollars to generate electronic medical records. All trying to talk to each other. Each built on a different platform. Each secure in their own private hospital or office.
Here's what I request. One platform. ONE platform. Let the local IT departments modify it to their needs. But use this same platform everywhere, in all offices, in all hospitals. In every place in this country. That's what I'm asking for. Not thousands of beta machines in a land with no VHS. Right now, I can't retrieve records from anywhere other than my hospital, or by talking with a body at another facility to fax things. Even if there is a body, if I try and get records from a VA on a holiday, I am laughed at.
Let VHS win and be done with it. So I can do my job efficiently and safely.
What you really want is a documented protocol that the various software packages can implement that will allow them to share information. This really shouldn't be so hard, we do this on teh intertubes all the time. Much better than only a single implementation of it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that a single platform would be a wonderful thing.
ReplyDeleteI recently posted my idea for a "relatively" cheap and easy way to achieve this in the U.S.
If you or any of your readers wish to take a look, just click on my name (above), which should link you to that post.
you misunderstand :) If they all could speak together then you could use YOUR platform which you like, to get the information from anybody elses platform and read it in the method to which you're accustomed.
ReplyDeleteIf you only want 1 system it will never work. It will try to be all things to all people. Those systems are the worst kind of money pits that are never finished and never work properly.
If you just publish a method to share information and insist that implementing it is part of the certification of any software, then you can connect, and get info from anybody else while still using the software that you like, no matter what software the other guy likes.
Shall I write the spec? Thats the kind of thing that I do... I wonder who I have to talk to in order that should be implemented... Do you think I"m being overly optimistic?