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South Australia Refuses To Stop Using An Expired, MS-DOS-Based Health Software (abc.net.au)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the jolly-swagman dept.

jaa101 writes: The Australian state of South Australia is being sued for refusing to stop using CHIRON, an MS-DOS-based software from the '90s that stores patient records. Their license expired in March of 2015, but they claim it would be risky to stop using it. CHIRON's vendor, Working Systems, says SA Health has been the only user of CHIRON since 2008 when they declined to migrate to the successor product MasterCare ePAS.
SA Health has 64 sites across South Australia -- all of which are apparently still using the MS-DOS-based health software from the 1990s.

4 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. Re:If they pay the license fee by Lirodon · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, they can't pay the license fee. They will no longer sell the license because it is end-of-life, but using it requires a license, hence the software may no longer be used by anyone.

  2. Re: If they pay the license fee by St.Creed · · Score: 3, Informative

    It works for Oracle...

    --
    Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
  3. Re:If they pay the license fee by fustakrakich · · Score: 4, Informative

    Eminent domain. Works for land, it can work for copyrights and patents. And yes, American courts have done so.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  4. NOT MS-DOS by sc0ob5 · · Score: 4, Informative
    CHIRON is not MS-DOS based, It runs on SunOS and is delivered by a terminal session.

    There are a number of other old patient administration systems (all UNIX based, mostly SunOS but OpenVMS as well, all delivered by terminal session) that are in use currently and hospitals that use them are being migrated to the new single system but it's a slow process as the new system does more than just patient administration, it replaces a number of other old systems as well.

    So that it's MS-DOS based is just plain wrong.

    I don't want to get into the licensing issues with Working Systems.

    How do I know this? I work for the department..