Saw his presentation of Wax this lunchtime, very good. There are some
significant advantages over HTML for the presentation of medical (and
general data). The problem remains though of who is going to pay for the
initial input work, and the update work for the data. Corporate Web sites
are costing from $104,000 to $285,000 (Gartner Group analysis) and the
Fortune 500 companies in the US spent anything from $840,000 to $1,5
million to get their Web sites up and running. I saw about 14 GP's / HA IT
folk at the meeting get really excited at the thought of all that
accessible data, waiting times, referral guides, formulary, local
guidelines in hypertext style format with embedded graphics etc. I would
love to see the "big plan" happen, but tend to think that buying every
practice an email account would be more useful overall.
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> From: Alan Hyslop <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Cc: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Wax
> Date: Wednesday 13 November 1996 08:00
>
> In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Anyone remember Iain Buchan? When last heard on GP-UK he was a
> Rheumatologist at the Wirral. He wrote a dead good wee 'electronic
> textbook' programme called Wax. Contains anything from formulary and
> guidelines to self-help groups. He gave to it 40 or so GPs who evaluated
> it positively as a clinical desktop tool.
>
> Anyway, he's now at Cambridge Uni Centre for Medical Informatics, near
> Ross no doubt. Wax is coming along well, but more to the point it can be
> downloaded free from http://www.medinfo.cam.ac.uk for Windows platforms.
>
> What I find interesting is the strategic goal: a dead-quick-and-easy
> programme safely on your hard disc but which can hold web page stuff,
> local protocols, or anything else. Decision support without cost or
> log-on delays. And the programme updates it's various web pages
> automatically overnight.
>
> BTW, Iain isn't paying me. He is however of Scottish origin :))
>
> Alan Hyslop
> Computing & IT Strategy
> Management Executive, NHS in Scotland.
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