As promised, Kate (Johnson) Adams' response:

"Gentleman.

Your comments have interested and appalled me in equal measure. What a
load of horrible old gossips you are!

Perhaps I could clear up a few things. I went to work for
MicroSolutions in June 1990 just after they had acquired some clinical
software they were planning to market. This software was so ghastly I
persuaded them to ditch it and re-write from scratch. I then sat down
and wrote the system description for the software which was released
in embryonic form in 1991. The system description was far from
finished when I left the company at the end of 1990, but I acted
intermittently as a consultant during the next couple of years,
particularly on the development of the clinical input screen and Read
Code interface. You might think I'm an intellectual lightweight Dr
Risk, but in fact I was one of the first people to embark on writing a
"spec" for a GP system (previously people had just made it up as they
went along, which is one of the reasons most of them were so awful
before the Requirements for Accreditation - I was on the panel for
RFA3, by the way).

Not long after leaving MicroSolutions, while working as IT adviser at
Barnet, and Kensington & Westminster, I developed a method of
assessing GP software in order to to be able to give the most honest
evaluation to doctors seeking to buy GP software. Along woth dozens of
packages, I regularly reviewed the Surgery Manager software (often
with other Facilitators present) and they and I advised practices to
include it in their evaluation of systems. This contineud when I
became Primary Care Systems Consultant for NW Thames RHA, and also
when working at Surrey.

I was never "very close to top management" at MicroSolutions (Heavens
above, did you ever meet any of them?), but became involved with one
of their account managers during my time at Surrey. Ther has never
been a connection between the advice I gave practices and any monetary
gain in my private life. However a malicious doctor in Surrey decided
there was (after I had told it about them openly) and wrote a letter
to Surrey Health Authority complaining about the relationship. I had
never concealed the relationship from ther Surrey HA management, but
they and I had a different agenda about how I should do the job. They
did not want MicroSolutions on their patch, and were pressuring me to
advise practices to buy from a particular supplier whose product I did
not feel was value for money. It was clear that the only solution was
for me to resign, and this was done.

Hope this clears up a bit of the "grey area".

Kate"
-- 
Mike Carey, Birmingham, UK
Useless, boring, impotent, elitist and very, very beautiful


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