There Are Some Pretty Smart People Out There Who Think The PCEHR is a Crock!

This popped up a few days ago.

PCEHR launch to the moon

2011-December-21 | 12:56 By: eric Filed in: pcehr | policy and politics

During the Health Informatics Conference in Brisbane in August 2011, the CEO of Australia’s National E-health Transition Authority, Peter Fleming, likened building the  national system of Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records (PCEHR) to putting a man on the moon. Well let’s examine where we are at the end of 2011, with 6 months to go to the launch date.

At first glance there is one notable similarity between building a national PCEHR system and putting a man on the moon. They both have a daring, pioneering spirit typical of young nations – a “Great, grand idea. Bugger the cost” mentality. We have seen it with Australia’s Snowy Mountains Scheme and more recently in Australia with the National Broadband Network.

In the case of the PCEHR, I suspect this is where the similarity ends.

Firstly, we still have no detailed design of the system, although we do have some notion of who will be building the rocket and what some of the components will probably be. We certainly don’t have any detailed specifications; we don’t know where the journey will take us, nor how we will know when we are there. We don’t know how long the journey will take; nor how much it will cost.

Secondly, we seem to be fixated on meeting the launch date, despite reservations in many quarters about various technical, policy and operational matters. In fact, beyond the launch, we have no understanding of the operational matters at all. None whatsoever! Six months to launch date!

Long before the North American Space Agency (NASA) launched the Columbia space ship on its historical, Apollo 11 journey in 1969, they had very detailed designs, very detailed costs, had spent years testing and retesting components and had spent years testing and retesting processes and procedures. NASA certainly did not merely focus on the launch, but on all the operational details of how the space ship needed to get to the moon, achieve a successful landing, perform a range of tasks on the lunar surface, and return the astronauts safely back to earth. The rocket launch itself, was but one small step for mankind, albeit one large step for man.

Read the sad conclusion of the blog here:

http://blog.healthbase.info/?p=310

What can one say? Eric has said it all and just adds to the reasons this PCEHR program needs to be closely reviewed and rethought.

Thanks Eric (quoted with permission)

David.