I'm not even sure what the point is of this IT upgrade. What exactly do they need this system for? Doctors work fine with paper charts and files -- this is a ridiculous amount of money -- what is the benefit and how do the costs make the benefit still beneficial?
I work at a pharmacy in northern Sweden, where ~95% of prescriptions are done electronically, and I can see a lot of benefits from bringing IT into the healthcare system. First of all, the gain in patient security. No more spending time trying to interpret sloppy handwritings on prescriptions sent in via fax by stressed doctors (Does that say 20 mg or 30 mg? hmmmmm...), and a lot less time is spent on having to call and ask for complementary information. The risk of the customer being given something else than the doctor intended is greatly reduced.
Secondly, the cost of paperwork is not to be underestimated either. Having medical history and journals on a computer makes life significantly easier when you need to search for something. Just enter the patient's SSN and you get access to pretty much everything you might need to know, instead of searching through several file cabinets and archives.
Perhaps you could get away with a lot less than 2.25 Gbit/s if you used an LCD monitor? With such a display the bandwidth only needs to account for the info sent from the graphics card to the monitor about which pixels that need to change color, or am I thinking completely wrong here? With an old-fashion CRT the bandwidth needs to be able to account for all the info that is needed for redrawing the picture at the appropriate frame rate.
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Secondly, the cost of paperwork is not to be underestimated either. Having medical history and journals on a computer makes life significantly easier when you need to search for something. Just enter the patient's SSN and you get access to pretty much everything you might need to know, instead of searching through several file cabinets and archives.
Perhaps you could get away with a lot less than 2.25 Gbit/s if you used an LCD monitor? With such a display the bandwidth only needs to account for the info sent from the graphics card to the monitor about which pixels that need to change color, or am I thinking completely wrong here? With an old-fashion CRT the bandwidth needs to be able to account for all the info that is needed for redrawing the picture at the appropriate frame rate.