gnumed-devel
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[Gnumed-devel] Specs (was: Gnumed brochures)


From: Hilmar Berger
Subject: [Gnumed-devel] Specs (was: Gnumed brochures)
Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 13:44:41 +0100

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 12:55:55 +0100
Karsten Hilbert <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 04:44:59PM +0100, Hilmar Berger wrote:
> 
> >> They are fed up with vaporware. Universities produce vapoware all the
> >> time. 
> > Sure, Universities are supposed to produce good science, not good software
> > applications. 
> The point Sebastian is making that the universities we know
> are actively making the science they produce look like the
> solutions the users want. *That's* vaporware. If someone
Agreed.
> turned out science and goes "this is science, don't be
> fooled into thinking it's a product" that'd be OK. That'd be
> science and not vaporware. Universities are then using the
> science-looking-like-a-product to scorn non-academic
> products. Anything that's not published in Nature can only
> have been done wrong in one way or another. And they are
> turning out people who don't know better than swarming out
> and trying to radically transform real world things/projects
> (which may be struggling to get something done in the field)
> with academic ideas of how the world ought to move.
Well, not sure if I understand what you mean. Does 'academic ideas' refer to my 
suggestion of doing a proper design before starting to code ? If yes, I can 
only tell you that I have seen and participated in a number of projects, 
software and others. Those without proper planning either took longer, didn't 
achieve the expected goals or had to be redone completely. In contrast, those 
projects or parts of them that did have well-done design specifications usually 
were much easier to manage and reached their goals more easily. 
Maybe the need of talking about what we wrote down was beneficial as much the 
fact that everything was written down to some document everybody could access. 
So, the argument of academic ideas vs. real world practice IMHO does not hold - 
planning usually saves time in every process, be it software design or packing 
your backpack (I remember you *had* a written plan for this task :) ).

> > They
> > just want to know if right now GNUmed matches their idea (=vision) of what a
> > medical software should look like.
> No. They have no clue what it should look like. They don't
> even have a clue what they would want were they given a
> choice. They don't even have a clue that there would be a
> choice would they seek for it. And for good reason. They are
> treating patients. And they are thinking of their families
> at night, not about software.
OK, you are right. The majority of the doctors wont know what they want or need 
until they are playing with the software. I guess doctors like you would know 
what you want, they do not. So they usually will assume that any medical 
software they can buy/get will be allright for them. But there is more than one 
such software available. How do doctors decide which one to choose ? Is it the 
price ? Does it depend on what other doctors use ?

Hilmar


-- 





reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]