Re: [Gnumed-devel] remote control GNUmed

[Sebastian Hilbert]

On Monday 28 November 2005 02:42, Ian Haywood wrote:
> Sebastian Hilbert wrote:
> > This software is capable of calling external programs. GNUmed will be
> > running in the backgroud all the time. Once you call a ditigal document (
> > GNUmed Archive aka librarian ) from this commercial software it will
> > raise GNUmed, select the corresponding patient and display the digital
> > document like a fax, referral letter , you name it. No user interaction
> > whatsoever. It will feel like a part of the 3rd party software.
>
> This is good work. Unfortunately we can't do anything like
> this in Australia which is where a lot of the mis-communication stems.
> For us GNUmed has to be the "kitchen-sink": it has to do *everything*
Since here in Germany the *needs to do everything* approach would be favored 
we constantly educated doctors that is a misconception that stem back from 
the Windows days. Unix has always built on top of small libraries and one 
command - one feature principle. IMHO it's a question of what you can live 
with. If you firmly believe you need to do everything with it you are out of 
luck but if I don't interpret Horst's situation entirely wrong even his 
version of GNUmed doesn't do everything but rather enough to be useful in his 
pratice. 
> because the proprietary guys aren't interested in interoperating.
It's not like the proprietary guys here give a d*** about interoperating. 
Fortunately they have to provide some interface since there is a German 
standard for calling medical equipment like ECG/EKG, urinalysis, peak flow 
meters. That is called GDT and hands out a flat file to the other application 
containing patient details and more or less requests like 'start EKG'. The 
legacy application will then read back the results file and store it some 
place. That's where we hook into. GNUmed is a 'medical device' for the time 
being. GNUmed receives and send flat files.

How do you guys drive in-practice medical equiment ?

Note that this has nothing to do with the remote control I am talking about. 
What I have been talking about is simple XML-RPC to interact with software 
which cares about interoperating.

So here in Germany we have two ways of getting data into GNUmed.

One last question I do have. Tell me a little more about Australian IT. 
Is it true that you don't have a ecosystem of small IT shop hacking away on 
software, doing consulting and providing service ? No matter for which OS.
Is it true that it is too hard or unattractive to set up a small shop 
yourself ?
I guess it might be possible to do so but the chances of gathering clients are 
equally low as over here. But don't you think it's easier here.

Sebastian
-- 
Sebastian Hilbert 
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