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I have a friend who is a hospital administrator. She recently complained about an awful Oracle system that tries to do everything and fails. As I think about

I have a friend who is a hospital administrator. She recently complained about an awful Oracle system that tries to do everything and fails. As I think about my friend with the Oracle system I wonder if the problem is technology or the companies implementing the technology?

liamk 17y ago
From the article it sounds like the companies are failing. Only three hospitals in the study showed marginal advantages to having software, and theirs was custom built. I'm guessing the other hospitals are more likely to have generic poorly thought out software, like your friend uses.
spamizbad 17y ago
One big plus of moving towards electronic medical recording keeping is you open up a whole new market for advanced software that 1) makes hospitals run more efficiently 2) provider a higher level of care for the patient and 3) flag and prevent potential errors that could result in malpractice (thus lowering insurance costs across the industry) The software that does this isn't going to be built over night, and will likely take at least a decade to mature, but when it does the whole industry wins big.
gaius 17y ago
I'm always fascinated by the thinking behind these ERP behemoths. Like, does anyone at Oracle or SAP ever take a vacation, or get promoted? How? Do they use their own software to do it?
mildweed 17y ago
The problem with healthcare software isn't the technology, its the people. Tons of entrenched stakeholders who have "always done it this way" on a committee full of people who have "always" done it another way. Then put more people on the committee, one or two from every department of the hospital. First you have to get the whole hospital to do their work all the same way. Once you tackle that beast, you then have to put software together that works with that single method, yet still accounts for all sorts of caveats.

liamk 17y ago

From the article it sounds like the companies are failing. Only three hospitals in the study showed marginal advantages to having software, and theirs was custom built. I'm guessing the other hospitals are more likely to have generic poorly thought out software, like your friend uses.

spamizbad 17y ago

One big plus of moving towards electronic medical recording keeping is you open up a whole new market for advanced software that 1) makes hospitals run more efficiently 2) provider a higher level of care for the patient and 3) flag and prevent potential errors that could result in malpractice (thus lowering insurance costs across the industry) The software that does this isn't going to be built over night, and will likely take at least a decade to mature, but when it does the whole industry wins big.

gaius 17y ago

I'm always fascinated by the thinking behind these ERP behemoths. Like, does anyone at Oracle or SAP ever take a vacation, or get promoted? How? Do they use their own software to do it?

mildweed 17y ago

The problem with healthcare software isn't the technology, its the people. Tons of entrenched stakeholders who have "always done it this way" on a committee full of people who have "always" done it another way. Then put more people on the committee, one or two from every department of the hospital. First you have to get the whole hospital to do their work all the same way. Once you tackle that beast, you then have to put software together that works with that single method, yet still accounts for all sorts of caveats.