[ale] Incompetent corporate web sites (was: Ubuntu Linux ROCKS!)

[Jim Kinney]

I have actually done some work with healthcare system and Linux. That
arena, healthcare IT, is a total hodgpodge free-for-all
not-a-standard-in-sight nightmare.

HIPAA looks _tame_ compared to the rest of HCIT!

There is a desperate need to force all the HCIT players to sit down
and play together. Why do we all drive on the right side of the road?
Because it was mandated and once it was done, it was good.

The AMA got a grant in the early '80's to develop a common diagnostic
numbering system. That was good. But they also got a free ticket to
require a freakin' LICENSE fee to get a copy of AND there are rules
attached to what you can and can't do with that name=number list.

That is still in place now. $280 get the right to view the list for a
single person for one calendar year. $5000 if you want to use the list
in an application for storing records. Gag!

For most people, their records are on paper at a smattering of
offices. That inhibits the emergency personnel from finding out granny
is on 3 blood thinners before they dump another in during her stroke.

If there is any one area where the OpenSource crowd could stand up and
design a process that would benefit the planet, HCIT data interchange
and security protocols is real high on that list.

If ALL records were name_scrubbed/hashed and disconnected from phone
and address (other than city, past and present - movement is
important) med research would have an unbelievable tool for tracking
trends, effectiveness, and more patterns than I can think of across
the entire population.

Would it not be interesting to discover a particular location has a
high rate of childhood diabetes while a neighboring location is
abnormally low?

So picture a combination of SSL, TLS, GPG, LDAP, PostgreSQL (cause
MySQL is in jeopardy), using multi-level selinux to access records
with a sequence of replicated key servers that handles authentication
of access credentials (and refusal of bad ones) scattered globally so
Dr Fred can read granny's records but not her insurance records and Dr
Sally in another town can too when granny falls and breaks a hip
visiting grandkids. We built interstate highways and the intertubes
for the military. Why not build something designed to help keep people
ALIVE.

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 3:00 PM, Tim Watts <timtw at earthlink.net> wrote:
> On Thursday 22 October 2009 1:47:02 pm Jim Kinney wrote:
>> Fire the congress critters, draft the doctors, shoot the insurance
>> execs, and make it all run on Linux systems and take care of EVERYONE.
>
> I was going to suggest that this thread needed the [OT] tag but then I see you
> made the Linux connection. :-)  Well said Jim.
>
>>
>> even the rich whether they deserve it or not
>>
>> --
>
> --
> There is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible and
> wrong.
>  -- H. L. Mencken
>
>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness