John made a very reasonable point about cargo not being in competition
with its carrier, I concur, and then went on to ask:-

I am not sure what EDIFACT has done to deserve this 'ugly duckling' type
of treatment.  If we can soon make it work safely and effectively and
make it available at a resonable cost will people not want to use it?
Meanwhile we should be pooling of knowledge and experience.  It would
take many months to get web based solutions in place even if the main
proponents had a clear plan of action.  There does not appear to be any
clear plan as yet, so it will take even longer particularly as there
appear to be problems to solve that have not yet been addressed .

Meanwhile while keeping an open mind on new developments, we can make
progress with EDI, benefitting patients, encouraging the development of
secondary care clinical systems, and learning many valuable lessons in
the process
--
John Williams, Senior User GP / Provider Links Project

---------
I think that the answer is as referred to in the message quoted from
above, bound up with IMG's efforts to get a grip on us by the wires.

This was rightly interpreted by most of the cynical and interested
target poulation as being obfusc and irrelevant to our interests -
empire building rather than service.

The GPPL offers much, but any temptation to discuss things in quiet
asides, and then present transport mechanisms and other bits of
technology as an inseparable part of the main aim will lead to a
resurgence of inflammatory scepticism among onlookers.

The simplest answer about EDIFACT versus HTML is that I can write HTML
using Windows Notepad, whereas EDIFACT is effectively proprietary, and
resistant to innovation.  Even if none of us _ever_ innovated, unlikely
given the degrees of technophilia and hubris exhibited daily on this
list, we all feel safer and happier if we think we could.

Mind you, I reckon that if one turns out a plain text file with a few
tilde separated values in it and some full figure times attached, and
splits a few records into two lines GOK why, the result should run
through an EDIFACT translator like nobodies business.  Analysis by
experiment anybody?


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