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Happy Monkey · 02-20-2009, 06:27 PM

Business and government both have long histories of screwing things up. They also have long histories of doing things well.

One thing I'm not sure is up business' alley is defining a standard format for medical records. Everyone who contributes will want their own proprietary stuff to be part of the standard, and won't want to pay for anyone else's. Most of the truly interoperable file formats came from government or (often government-funded) academia.

I would think that one of the best things the government could do about medical records would be to have NIST come out with a standard, non-proprietarty format, require that all doctors and hospitals be able to at least export to and import from that format, and put the funding towards that effort.

02-20-2009, 06:27 PM	#133
Happy Monkey I think this line's mostly filler. Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: DC Posts: 13,575	Business and government both have long histories of screwing things up. They also have long histories of doing things well. One thing I'm not sure is up business' alley is defining a standard format for medical records. Everyone who contributes will want their own proprietary stuff to be part of the standard, and won't want to pay for anyone else's. Most of the truly interoperable file formats came from government or (often government-funded) academia. I would think that one of the best things the government could do about medical records would be to have NIST come out with a standard, non-proprietarty format, require that all doctors and hospitals be able to at least export to and import from that format, and put the funding towards that effort. __________________ _________________ \|...............\| We live in the nick of times. \| Len 17, Wid 3 \| \|_______________\| [pics]