Henry Cohen asked:
Now given the number of suppliers in this market, one has to ask (a) how
many of them are likely to produce a LAN-based client server solution?
(b) how many of those solutions will be truly interchangeable (eg
relational database, SQL, client server, browser-enabled, IP support
etc)? .................................
Maybe one could look for an answer by considering a different paradigm.
First let's use an analogy. Private telephone exchanges (switches in the modern
vernacular) are getting cheaper and smaller yet some users are demanding more
and
more sophistication. BT now offers shared capacity on its main public switches
so that
many users in an organisation can have their own virtual switch. This is
particularly useful
for organisations spread over many buildings in a locality. All calls within the
organisation
are free as they are in effect treated as internal calls. Within the rental fee
everything is
managed.
Now, apply the same principle to many practices (or super practices under the
new PC
model) that combine together to have a single system linked together, say, by BT
or a low
cost cable company. OK the market place would shrink but there could well be
economies
of scale in maintenance, customisation, training, data conversion, and the use
of the more
sophisticated hardware and software. The unit cost of the system could be much
higher than current systems, typically used in a practice of 3 or 4 GPs, but the
cost per GP
or per terminal, lower. In fact, using the switch analogy, there may no need to
purchase the
system but instead rent the use of it.
It needs working out, but if potentially viable, some systems provider may
decide to try to be
first to market and take the lion's share. They might even take a new object
oriented system
from the states and plug-in the bits that are different. With sufficient common
core, the market
actually becomes global with affiliates in each country localising the
functionality.
Here's some snippets from a CORBAmed posting I have just received.
Dear CORBAMed Members,
The OBJECTive Technology Group is researching both DICOM 3.0 and HL7 product
capabilities for a very large medical provider that operates internationally.
The information infrastructure will be based on Microsoft NT clients and
servers with some Unix for high end database down the road.
<snip>
- Platform/OS support (NT 4.0 Pentium & Apha, and some Unix)
- Database dependancies (SQL, OODBMS, ODBC, JDBC)
- Language Interfaces/dependancies (C, C++, Smalltalk, CORBA IDL, Mumps)
- Distibuted Computing mechanisms supported (DCE, CORBA, DCOM, MOM)
<snip>
Our customer is building a standards based architecture and will require all
of its development activities to incorporate the chosen solution. As one of
the largest HMOs in the world, these capabilities are strategic to its
operation.
<end extract>
Anyone know who this customer might be?
Regards
Alan
Alan Cooper, Strategic Business Analyst, Managing Change
Tel & Fax: +44 (0)1264 737609 near Andover, England
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