Re: dentist software
>
> >> special rendering: fork a library if possible, data visualization is
> >> always in need
>
> Forking is likely not a good idea.
sorry, need to get my terminology straight; "split off" a library
Likely already done several times. "Doing DICOM" is not as trivial as it sounds.
> >> managing dialogs and forms specific for a clinic: we have needed a
> >> generic filemaker/msaccess replacement for a long time.
>
>See, many people wouldn't want to entrust their medical records to
msaccess.
>I cannot properly comment on filemaker. What one really wants is a
client/server architecture with a "real" database.
when I say msaccess I refer to the ease of creating a front-end. it should use a normal database. I've tried to switch people away from filemaker but it all comes down to "SQL is not pretty. we will not use it". OO and Kexi are attempts but very poor ones. if you can have a gui and a quick way to integrate it into a program, you are on good way to a system to maintain all your billing and crap that really requires custom programming. not optimal but a solution the open source community can afford to maintain.
on a side-note, stay away from filemaker :S
Karsten Hilbert wrote:
>>>> Usually a professor's interest in a project lives only as long as
>>>>
>> funding flows.
>>
>> I need to contradict here. If you are not interested int the work, then
>> you are not
>> interested in the work, be there funding flowing or not. You are claiming
>> that the
>> interest may only go where the money is. It is different - those
>> professors that only go
>> for the money are driven by despair or some other negative energy. And if
>> that is the
>> case, the interst already ends when the grant got through, which is even
>> before the money
>> has arrived.
>>
> You are certainly right. What I meant to say is that *commitment* ends
> when the funding stops. The interest does not stop because otherwise
> the funded commitment would not have happened in the first place. And
> this is quite logical: University Depts NEED funding and hence professors
> CANNOT stay committed to something (large) that is not funded (adequately).
>
I tend to look at it differently; commitment ends when the publication
is out. you will e.g. find many programs for bioinformatics that were
just left dead once they were published. instead we have to live with
crap like bioperl. this is purely because publication gives grants,
maintenance does not.
> I have yet to meet any university commitment under such terms which has
> led to a software component of use and maintainability beyond the scope
> of the subject of study in question. Again, been there, done that, several
> times, and with people genuinely interested in the field. However, I can
> still only speak from my limited personal experience.
>
my limited experience (n=2) is that thesis students usually can't do
programming well enough to create production systems in the given time.
if you take the top candidates, they might be able to though (send them
my way).
>> How should Open Source know about all that without close contact to
>> dentists?
>>
> It only works by having dentists among developers and specs people.
>
totally agree
>> Isn't there some Dentist union to contact about it?
>>
> There is, in each and every country. But they (if they are anything like the
> "Doctor's union" in Germany) are less than interested - or rather don't
> understand the problem domain and (one of) its solution(s). Once more:
> been there, done that, as far as doctors are concerned. Trust me, I am one.
>
> I'd love to be proven wrong but so far it's been a sad state of affairs.
>
I can increase your sample size. I tried one who appeared to be the head
of imaging at KI south and no, they let a company do everything. 0
interest in getting the hands dirty. I have also noticed that MDs aren't
very geeky - no dedicated IRC channel for example; that doesn't help.
--
--
------------------------------------------------
Johan Henriksson
MSc Engineering
PhD student, Karolinska Institutet
http://mahogny.areta.org http://www.endrov.net
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