[ale] Re: [ale-unemployed] Where we stand 2/8/02

[Irv Mullins]

On Monday 11 February 2002 11:21 pm, jeff hubbs wrote:

> It might therefore be a lost cause to try to help these medical
> practices avoid these upgrade costs, for the real solution is to create
> a replacement app for networked Linux systems.  This is a noble goal,
> certainly, but if you ascribe to the postulate that says that it takes
> ten years to produce quality software almost no matter what it is or how
> many people work on it, you're fighting an uphill battle nevertheless.
> Sure, developing under Linux is schweet because the OS, the language
> support, the libs, etc. are at your fingertips, but that still doesn't
> change the fact that people still must code, test, code, test, code,
> test.  That would be true if this were done in COBOL on VMS, BASIC on
> TRS-80, or Brainfuck on PlayStation2.  No, for these guys, perhaps Linux
> can be used to ease pain and suffering in a support role as
> fax/file/print server, Perl-executing data munger, etc.

There's more to it than that. Lots of these medical, dental, optical, and 
veterinary apps  come with a hefty subscription price which includes 
access to tons of information (drug interactions, etc, etc) and copyrighted 
info (like the sheets my optometrist prints out to explain what's wrong with 
my vision).  Those extra services help justify the price, and are things that 
just cannot be supplied by open-source programmers.

All things considered, the medical field is not a good one to break into.

Regards,
Irv

---
This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more info. Problems should be 
sent to listmaster at ale dot org.