Thomas Beale let me know he had posted a new piece today.
Ruminations on ‘design’ in e-health
I have often bemoaned the state of standards for the e-health sector. Earlier posts provide details. The main argument is that the key specifications the sector needs are for interoperable data, information and knowledge, but that the main approach to getting these is via standards agencies, whose processes almost guarantee failure. Hence the ‘standards crisis’ in health informatics. The failure is not innate in standards agencies as such; it is just that standards agency committees in the e-health sector are doing the wrong thing. They are acting as de facto R&D fora rather than as a choosing mechanism on proven designs from industry. In my view (and experience) this is because among the members and leaders of those committees are almost no engineers, i.e. people who understand a) how standards actually work in other industries and b) that design is an essential element of what is being standardised. The consequence of the situation in e-health standards is ‘design-by-committee’.
Read the full blog post here:
http://wolandscat.net/2010/12/19/design-in-ehealth/
The full post is well worth a browse.
The paragraph I have italicised I have to say I have an especial fondness for. If only we could be developing Standards on the basis of proven implementations I have the feeling we might have a smaller collection of Standards, but that collection would be trustworthy and reliable.
As some other sites often finish a post.
What do you think?
David.
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