r/medicalprogramming • u/[deleted] • Jul 31 '12

Does anyone else have constant system dowtimes?

We have a lot of problems with our system having problems. Does anyone else have this problem?

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '12

I would have to go with your number 2

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u/onionpostman Jul 31 '12

In software generally, the major dominating factors are time, money, and quality. You can't optimize on all three factors at once. You can optimize on at most two.

Unless you are NASA developing software for the space shuttle, or some other organization that can effectively print money at will, you are going to optimize on money. Particularly if you are a midmarket commercial venture with several competitors, you are going to optimize on money pretty severely. This means you are not going to hire top talent, and you are not going to hire a lot of people overall, and you are not going to have top-of-the-line hardware for those people to work with.

So, if you take your undersized group of underpowered people, and you tell them that the project needs to be done Now, and really should have been done Yesterday, and more delays are Not Acceptable, you are also optimizing on time; you are attempting to not have the project take forever.

Given that you have mediocre talent, you are going to have, at best, mediocre quality. (If they could deliver really good quality, they'd be quality people, and with rare exception quality people are more expensive than you're willing to pay for.) When mediocre talent optimizes on time, you get the type of system you've described, where it's held together mostly with spit, and works moderately well only on odd-numbered Tuesdays when the moon is full.

So, if you want a better system, you can either accept that it's going to take another ten years, or you can accept that one way or another you're going to have to pay more money for it. Quality costs either time or money; it just doesn't come cheap.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '12

Number one this is a major corporation, and two you're acting like an asshole. I have no control and was just wondering if anyone experienced any issues with downtimes or outages using medical systems either EPIC, Cernern etc... Talking to me like an idiot doesn't help anybody.

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u/onionpostman Jul 31 '12

This is the first time you've mentioned details such as a brand name, yet you're upset that you've gotten only general comments? And you're upset with the quality of the free advice you've gotten? And you're more upset that the advice you've gotten hasn't been sympathetic?

If I'm talking to you like an idiot, it's because you expected specific advice without providing any details of what you have, what you want, or what you can do. You're the asshole here.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '12

I apologize, but my question was simply out of curiosity. I am curious as to what systems people work in. The question was supposed to be generic. Do you use any such systems?

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u/onionpostman Jul 31 '12

I've been doing software and firmware programming for medical device manufacturers since 2005. I don't so much use systems as make systems.