Re: [Health] Does gnu health support medical devices like scanners etc?

[Bram Mertens]

Thanks for the feedback.  I'll talk to my friend to get an idea of
what they use now, whether they have any kind of integration at
present to see if this could potentially be useful for him.

Unfortunately this means that he will still need his Windows clients
and server for the closed apps he's using.  What is the experience of
running Gnu Health on Windows?  I doubt I'll be able to convince him
to install another server.

Regards

Bram

On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 7:28 AM, Chris <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Several dentist in our region have recently suffered a virus attack on
>> their Windows XP clients.  The problems initially manifested
>> themselves when they could no longer open the software they use to
>> process their X-ray images.
>> Apparently upgrading to Windows 8 would mean that they have to buy a
>> proprietary driver for this X-ray device which costs about 8000 EUR!
>
> Wow! I'm sorry to hear that. It is becoming increasingly difficult to
> handle the extraordinary cost of medical devices and software.
>
>> If gnu health can support such devices while at the same time offer
>> improved facilities to keep track of patient records and the like I
>> may be able to convince him and his colleagues to give gnu health a
>> try.
>
> If you mean, can gnu health store medical images? The answer is yes. If
> you mean, does gnu health support specific devices? The answer is no.
> I think you have a great point: many of these devices (x-ray machines,
> etc.) are locked-in and closed. The subtle trap of software and device
> lock-in is especially worrisome in the medical environment. The
> solution, it seems to me, is loosely-coupled design.
>
> GNU Health is built on top of an application framework (Tryton) which
> handles the lower-level bits of user interface, data management, etc...
> and everything below that level (the OS, hardware drivers, filesystem,
> etc.) is mostly invisible to gnu health. Closed hardware firmware is
> a generally difficult problem and plagues every place you find embedded
> systems (which is everywhere nowadays). Think routers, ATMs, airport
> xray machines, voting machines, etc. Writing open source drivers is very
> important (and difficult!) but, I believe, beyond the scope of this
> project.
>
> I hope I informed, even though I'm sorry to say that I didn't reassure
> much.
>
> -C
>