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I Know What Makes Kittens Cry

I have a sister in law. She's a pretty nice person. She's a doctor who works in a hospital. Apparently there's this software system in the hospital that doctor's use to prescibe medication. She can't use it. Because her name has an Irish spelling. In other words, her last name has an apostrophe. You know, like Paddy O'Drinksalot. Or Seamus O'Beatwife.

She types in that little tick -- ' -- and this wonderfully convenient program barfs all over like a patient on too much ipecac.

She tells this happy little story of medical wonderment --- and me? I get a little twitchy. Because that's the sort of thing that makes me question the future of mankind. In response to this story I ranted for several minutes about lazy programmers, lack of quality control and why Kuala Lumpur will be smarter than America in two years.

It's enough to make a kitten cry.

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# re: I Know What Makes Kittens Cry

Gravatar Oh wow...that's horrible...seriously, ASP 3.0?!

:P

D 11/17/2006 11:11 AM | D'Arcy from Winnipeg

# re: I Know What Makes Kittens Cry

Gravatar I'm a technical manager in a hospital and none of this surprises me. It was only in 2005 that we got rid of our last Windows 3.1 server. How can this be? A few things. 1. 510(k) FDA certification. Vendors HAVE to certify medical grade equipment. The closer it is to the patient, the more certs. This includes software. (Kinda makes sense, you don't want crap monitoring grandma.) 2. Cost control. Vendors use the exact same stuff for any given application - support becomes very cost effective over the long run. As stuff moves closer to the patient, Vendors HATE to upgrade/fix stuff since it has to go through another round of certs. If the bug doesn't hurt anything and there is a work around...why fix it - it'll cost money to the vendor. 3. Some hospitals make money - other can't/don't. Profit margins for hospitals are typically 1.5% - 3.5% of gross. Not alot of money considering the cost of a leading edge CT. The desire to change out working systems in a cost constrained environment is low at best. 4. Lawyers 5. It's a tough environment to work in. Folks want the best care possible (I do). We do not have enough money to pay for that kind of care. Doctors love to make money to pay for malpractice and drive Ferrari's AND LAWYERS love to capitalize on the finer points of law. So... 11/17/2006 11:36 AM | Rick

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