Comments on: Monday Morning Update 5/11/09

By: Unfrozen Caveman CIO

Unfrozen Caveman CIO — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:27:56 +0000

I don’t understand Epic. It seems as though it costs too much money. Your large operating budgets and limitless capital budgets frighten and confuse me.

I don’t know. Because I’m a caveman — that’s the way I think. There is one thing I DO know. Healthcare IT needs to rethink what is a reasonable amount to pay for technology.

Cirroc

By: Soup Line Jamie

Soup Line Jamie — Tue, 12 May 2009 04:05:35 +0000

Years ago I programmed forms for a local hospital on Epic. They eventually decided it wasn’t worth the effort to pay me to do new projects when the IT department could typically do something good-enough for free. One of my last experiences was when the oncology department was willing to foot the bill for me to build a 1-page form that did exactly what they wanted. IT heard about the project and 2 weeks later the IT guy had configured a couple of screens that were good enough to cost me the job.

As for development options in a big vendor system, when I threw in the towel in 2005 they already had SDKs for GUI screens, custom data entry forms, web applications and had at least two customers using their SOA. The real problem is that paying programmers is bad PR when the CIO has just spent millions on a new system that supposedly does it all.

By: p_anon

p_anon — Mon, 11 May 2009 23:34:05 +0000

BPM tools (AKA “Business Process Management”; in the context of SOA) are explicitly built to tie a bunch of services together into a kind of workflow. The idea is that, once you’ve got your SOA rolled out, you can rework your business processes with these high-level BPM tools, making your business nimble. Maybe (to use a business example) you have an insurance verification service, and you need to … I don’t know, have someone spot-check after the computer system has done its automated insurance check. So you go into your fancy BPM tool and add a little box on the workflow, and … some implementation magic happens … and now you have an extra screen wherein someone can spot check the insurance verification results. All this without going to the vendor.

Bad example, sorry. I’m trying to show the difference between simply swapping out services (which is mostly achievable with interfaces we have today) and intercepting/adding workflow around/rearranging the services, which is something BPM theoretically offers. Haven’t tried it/wouldn’t know.

The problem with BPM, even in the best case, is that the first step is to get your pile of services. We’re not there, thus BS’s assertion is flawed. Anyway, if anyone’s trying to sell you on BPM, definitely ask for an example of how it can help. Hopefully their example will be better than mine

By: Unfrozen Caveman IT Guy

Unfrozen Caveman IT Guy — Mon, 11 May 2009 22:59:15 +0000

I don’t understand all your fancy words and abbreviations. It is all too complex for my tiny brain to absorb. I’m just a lowly unfrozen caveman IT guy.

But I do know one thing about healthcare IT:

BPM bad…..SOA good!

By: Mozy saved my ass-ets

Mozy saved my ass-ets — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:03:13 +0000

I second the Mozy endorsement. I got on a cross-country flight last year with my notebook, and my hard drive died 5 min after altitude. My data wasn’t so invaluable that I would pay for clean-room recovery, but I couldn’t imagine losing it all. Fortunately, I use Mozy so I was able to restore all my data to a new drive, 2500 miles from my home. Didn’t lose a thing. Best part – once you set it up, you never have to remember to do anything more.