"We gotta OUTSOURCE because it looks good on a quarteryly statement."
Actually outsourcing something like web design and hosting is a very sound IT decision for most health care organizations -- and not just for cost reasons. I mean think about it: Would a web hosting company employ a doctor to take care of their employees when they got sick? Of course not. That's because a web hosting company is supposed to be focused on web hosting, not providing health care. Conversely, a health care organization should be FOCUSED ON PROVIDING HEALTH CARE not web hosting.
I work in IT at a medium sized health care organization in the midwest and I will freely admit we don't have the talent inhouse to design and administer our own web page. (Interestingly, I guess we beat the rush to MedSeek.) Sure we could employ a web designer and a good websever administrator, but there are a couple of reasons this wouldn't make much sense: - There really isn't enough work here to keep either of them busy most of the time - It's hard to entice qualified technical candidates to move to smaller towns and cities - It's difficult for most not-for-profit health care systems to pay the kinds of competitive rates that would bring in top tier staff
It makes much more sense for us to pay a contractor who can hire technical experts (hopefully...) to run many websites all at once. Then our IT department can worry more about supporting clinical data systems, which gets back to focusing on health care. (And frankly, if we had been running our own site I'd bet that if we were trying to do things ourselves we would, at some point, have screwed up just as badly as Verus did -- it just wouldn't be such big news.)
There's another business model that may end up having some success: public broadcasting.
Here in the Twin Cities, Minnesota Public Radio has recently launched an alternative music station called The Current. Though they are, at heart, a terrestrial broadcast station, they also stream on the web. Given their target demographic (i.e. young people), I'm guessing that a significant number of their listeners tune in over the web and that their fundraising successes thus far have relied at least partially on convincing internet listeners to donate.
Is it inconceivable that this model could work just as well for an internet-only station? I don't think so, but it isn't easy. Minnesota Public Radio has been in the public broadcasting business for a while and in addition to producing excellent radio shows with talented staff, they are experts on fundraising. It's not enough to just throw some music on their internet and hope people will send you checks, but I think The Current proves that the possibility is there for this model to work.
Just in case you are actually thinking about moving to Canada, you can take the Skilled Worker Self-Assessment Test to see if you meet the minimum standard to immigrate as a Skilled Worker.
Of course if you don't qualify as a Skilled Worker, you can always try the political assylum route:)
Damned if you do, damned if you don't
on
Testing ISP Censorship
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It's pretty clear what the motivation for removing the content is. Take a look at the choices:
Take it down. If it really is copywritten material, then you won't hear from the user. If not, then the user will contact you and offer facts and their personal attribution that it's legal. (Think due dillgence.) Cost to ISP: $0.
Leave it up. If it's copywritten, you'll probably be spending thousands of dollars on lawyers in the near future. Cost to ISP: $Lots.
Considering that the cost of any legal action would probably scale with a company's size (bigger company == claim for more damages), even a "major ISP" is would have strong motivation to take the first option.
Slashdot Mirror
"We gotta OUTSOURCE because it looks good on a quarteryly statement."
Actually outsourcing something like web design and hosting is a very sound IT decision for most health care organizations -- and not just for cost reasons. I mean think about it: Would a web hosting company employ a doctor to take care of their employees when they got sick? Of course not. That's because a web hosting company is supposed to be focused on web hosting, not providing health care. Conversely, a health care organization should be FOCUSED ON PROVIDING HEALTH CARE not web hosting.
I work in IT at a medium sized health care organization in the midwest and I will freely admit we don't have the talent inhouse to design and administer our own web page. (Interestingly, I guess we beat the rush to MedSeek.) Sure we could employ a web designer and a good websever administrator, but there are a couple of reasons this wouldn't make much sense:
- There really isn't enough work here to keep either of them busy most of the time
- It's hard to entice qualified technical candidates to move to smaller towns and cities
- It's difficult for most not-for-profit health care systems to pay the kinds of competitive rates that would bring in top tier staff
It makes much more sense for us to pay a contractor who can hire technical experts (hopefully...) to run many websites all at once. Then our IT department can worry more about supporting clinical data systems, which gets back to focusing on health care. (And frankly, if we had been running our own site I'd bet that if we were trying to do things ourselves we would, at some point, have screwed up just as badly as Verus did -- it just wouldn't be such big news.)
Here in the Twin Cities, Minnesota Public Radio has recently launched an alternative music station called The Current. Though they are, at heart, a terrestrial broadcast station, they also stream on the web. Given their target demographic (i.e. young people), I'm guessing that a significant number of their listeners tune in over the web and that their fundraising successes thus far have relied at least partially on convincing internet listeners to donate.
Is it inconceivable that this model could work just as well for an internet-only station? I don't think so, but it isn't easy. Minnesota Public Radio has been in the public broadcasting business for a while and in addition to producing excellent radio shows with talented staff, they are experts on fundraising. It's not enough to just throw some music on their internet and hope people will send you checks, but I think The Current proves that the possibility is there for this model to work.
Of course if you don't qualify as a Skilled Worker, you can always try the political assylum route :)
- Take it down. If it really is copywritten material, then you won't hear from the user. If not, then the user will contact you and offer facts and their personal attribution that it's legal. (Think due dillgence.) Cost to ISP: $0.
- Leave it up. If it's copywritten, you'll probably be spending thousands of dollars on lawyers in the near future. Cost to ISP: $Lots.
Considering that the cost of any legal action would probably scale with a company's size (bigger company == claim for more damages), even a "major ISP" is would have strong motivation to take the first option.