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Switching Hospital Systems to Linux

Posted by samzenpus on from the open-sores dept.

jcatcw writes "Health care software vendor McKesson Provider Technologies is focusing on ways to cut IT costs for customers, including hospitals and medical offices. The cure is moving many of McKesson's medical software applications to Linux, which can then be used on less expensive commodity hardware instead of expensive mainframes. A deal with Red Hat allows McKesson to offer its software in a top-to-bottom package for mission-critical hospital IT systems."

5 of 305 comments (clear)

  1. Affordable health care by log1385 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If this catches on, health care will become a little more affordable. 60% of IT costs is quite a bit of money for hospitals to save.

    --
    Seek and ye shall find.
  2. Lackluster vendor makes incremental, pitiful step by dmr001 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you use McKesson's software every day like I do, you would be amazed at its expense, sluggishness, and irritability. Lab systems that insist on running on Internet Explorer 6 and resizing to fit your whole screen aren't a big surprise - however mediocre. But mission critical systems that routinely crash with Java errors, can't run reliably remotely, require large IT departments to maintain, are slower and more difficult to use than the tty-based systems they replaced, can't trend labs, can't reliably wildcard search patient names, and die miserably if the wind blows more than 5 miles an hour or the moon is waxing - this is truly sad.

    I wish our hospital system could dig its way out of it. I don't think running on top of Linux will help much. See if you can get a screenshot of their software on their website - I can't - they don't promote this stuff to the physicians and nurses who use it - it gets sold to the suits. There's a goldmine out their awaiting some entrepreneur who could really take pride in writing good software of this sort, and though I love Linux, I don't really care what it runs on top of.

  3. Re:Lackluster vendor makes incremental, pitiful st by basic0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There's a goldmine out their awaiting some entrepreneur who could really take pride in writing good software of this sort This is exactly what I've been doing for the last 8 months. I'm being paid by a neurologist to develop a system to run his practice. What I've built is a LAMP framework that can be adapted to any medical practice. It's entirely paperless, replaces faxing, automates a ton of stuff currently done by secretaries, and meets all the requirements for electronic records set out by The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. I'm developing the whole thing on my own (so far), and although I'm not a brilliant programmer, it's faster, more secure, more scalable, and more platform independent, and way more intuitive than anything that's currently being used at any hospital in our city.

    We're in beta testing with actual patients now and my boss is bankrolling us into starting a company to sell the software and other medical-related IT solutions to local doctors (many of whom have horribly inefficient offices and don't fully realize it). I'm hoping we can expand beyond just local doctors, because it is a huge market and the best anyone else seems to be doing (around southern Ontario at least) is holding seminars to talk about how technology could be used to enhance medical practice someday.

  4. Re:... and screw the economy by RESPAWN · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No, the spending wouldn't decrease at all. They would just reapportion the funds to equipment such as the latest digital X-Ray machines. Or the newest CAT scanner. Or the latest robotic surgical nurse.

    You get the picture. In fact, in most of health care, that's just what happens already. They spend as little as possible on IT and reapportion the cost to areas of service that will directly benefit their ability to attract doctors and customers and therefore generate greater revenues.

    Those reading this might think I'm kidding, but let me tell you this: I once replaced a token ring network with an ethernet network connecting Pentium IIs and IIIs. In 2005.

    -- A former healthcare IT worker.

    --

    If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.

  5. Re:Lackluster vendor makes incremental, pitiful st by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm a doctor in a hospital that just deployed an electronic health record system that is slower than the system it replaced - which was slower than the TTY system it replaced - that refuses to search patient names if you can't provide a first initial.

    Pay attention here, IT freaks. Notice that the user here (possibly your doctor) says nothing about the OS. This is simply abysmal design and implementation. Unix/Linux/Windows/OSX/Oracle/Postgres/MySQL/MSSQL....ALL could end up thusly. Or all could end up not too bad. Design it right, and build it right. Think about what your user is actually trying to accomplish.

    I saw some comments upthread about RedHat this and Linux that...Bullshit. The user interface is (most of) the key. If you screw that, the backend matters little.

    Yes, if you start from a stable base, it is easier. But no matter what the base is, if you fuck up the actual program and interface the that user, in this case a doctor or nurse, uses....everything else is irrelevant. They will hate it. And still not care what the base OS is.