[Gnumed-devel] Good news from MIMS

[richard terry]

I've spent some time talking to MIMS again and have some good news.

Margaret Pritchard the IT manager and her associates have over recent times 
become more responsive to the open source movement and its implications. I've 
had a number of converstations over the last 12 months or so arguing the case 
for provision of limited data.

I spoke to Margaret today and she has agreed in principal to the provision of 
a limited data set including field definitions for use within gnumed.

As a start I will be able to post all the field data for the MimsAnnual drug 
for ranitidine as the Zantac brand. 

I previously demonstrated this working via screen dumps on my private machine 
here at work, so the code should still be around.

She will be emailing me to confirm our discussion and after easter we should 
be able to have the data for two drugs, one non-authority and one authority, 
for use in the  Mims Bi Monthly and interactions (ie for prescribing). I've 
asked for ones with drug interactions to allow us to show interactions as 
well.

I beleive this is extremely good and important news for gnuMed as it will 
allow the project to progress to script writing, interaction and allergy 
modules very quickly.

Note the drug data WILL NEVER be open source, nor I beleive should it be.

Users both here and overseas will be able to subscribe to it with the usual 
payment, checks and balances that exist with any agreement between purchaser 
and vendor, such as current exist for almost all doctors in australia via 
medical director software, and some private invididuals such as myself who 
pay their yearly subscription and use it only in their surgery. I think the 
drug data is reasonably priced.

I think we should continue to support MIMS in their effort which to date has 
provided accurate and timely provision of drug data to our community.

Regards

Richard