Re: [Gnumed-devel] Re: Vision and implications: Strategic planning: Goal-setting

[Karsten Hilbert]

On Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 12:57:29PM -0800, Jim Busser wrote:

> >a comprehensive scalable software solution for paperless medical 
> >practice with emphasis on privacy protection, secure patient-centric 
> >record sharing, decision support and ease of use.
> 
> Each of these pieces will be worth better describing / defining / 
> understanding if we are to fit the vision together with a strategic 
> plan. Do we operationalize these in absolute terms, or relative to 
> what else is otu there? e.g. does "affordable" mean cheaper than 
> everything else? Does it mean "costs less than 5% of your operating 
> budget"?
No. Not in my vision.

> Where do we "set the bar" for the following:
> 
> - affordable
Cost is a conceptual rather than
concrete consideration in my vision. I'd chose tools that
are affordable to pretty much anyone (say, Debian,
PostgreSQL, Python, wxPython). But I am not going to put
that down in numbers.

> - reliable
Probably the single highest ranking consideration for me. NO
DATA CORRUPTION if we can help it.

> - comprehensive
Only gradually, in my vision.

> - interoperable
It's interoperable by nature. Only worth spending effort on
when actual use cases arise.

> - scalable
It should scale but only so much. In my vision from 1
machine to, say, 25 clients. Or 50 clients with standard GP
practice load. But nothing beyond that - IMO.

> - privacy protection
No 2 principle after "reliable".

> - secure patient-centric record sharing
IMO much to broadly a term. Sounds a bit like fad of the day
to me.

> - decision support and
Yes, but a lofty goal - keep it real, keep it down to earth.

> - ease of use.
Yes, in the sense of supporting a useful and fast workflow.

> Oh, by the way, is any part of the vision be that GNUmed be *actually 
> used* by people?
Yes, but difficult to define. It certainly does not matter
all to much to me whether Dr. Someone can use GNUmed. I
don't develop to eventually convince him that he *should*
use it. I develop for my needs and for the needs of those
who get in touch with me to have their needs covered (say,
like Jim). But they need to get in touch with me. I am not
going to spend much effort in getting in touch with *them*.
This does not, of course, exclude others from doing so.

My vision, however, does include that *technically* GNUmed
is done in a way that it *can* potentially be useful for
other people or can be made to be so.

> Presumably that should be among our goals, and how 
> we define success. We are hopefully not just doing this to look at it 
> :-)  Also, another of our goals is for the project and the software 
> to be sustainable
Sure, simple selfishness dicates that.

> (at least until such time as there is something so 
> much better, or convergence, that we be true to principle and leave 
> GNUmed to die a noble death and support anything that we truly think 
> is able to do a better job, if that should come along.
Surely so.

Karsten
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