
Bronzed but wanting to live forever
Unless he's put on fake tan, surely he should be aware of the risk of sun exposure and how it might dent his plans for immortality... or does he have a solution to skin cancer than none of us know about?
During the keynote of Oracle's annual sales jamboree in Las Vegas, founder and CTO Larry Ellison took the opportunity to offer some profound insight into the state of healthcare in the US and Europe. "If we're not careful… we're gonna bankrupt Western civilization unless we find a more efficient way of providing healthcare to …
Which last time I looked, was charging £90 for 2 years dynamic dns services via dyn.com which they now own
Someone please give these people a mirror to look at
As to his interest in healthcare, that interest probably only goes as far as to how lucrative it can be, and if anyone is doing bankrupting, it should be them doing it
I'm pretty sure the financial death of the world will be at the behest of the greedy techbros and megacorps, not mere health care. Its going to take more than one industry to bankrupt a nation (unless of course, you're talking the military, who can always outspend any budget they're granted by simply awarding contracts for $500 "mil spec" hammers with olive green handles.
The old $500 hammer trope. Not true friend. These costs are caused by government regulations and mil standards. Because shits like Larry Ellison over promise and under deliver the government has to verify over and over again that the product they received meets mil specs. Guess what when the military orders a new multimillion part the contractor is required to add a specified overhead. When you add $450 dollars to that it is noise. When you add it to a single low cost item it is noticable.
So many in the US are suspicious of the healthcare industry, many see what they interpret as misdiagnosis and mistreatment in the name of profits, or outright denial of necessary care by insurance companies. There is a lot trust to be earned back in healthcare here before (I would estimate) half the population even thinks about consenting to a federal database. Even before we get to the subject of healthcare, the phrase "federal database" will rile up millions the moment it is uttered, knowing it will be another pie for government to stick their thumbs into.
Denmark has some experience with a central health database, so people traveling would always have access to records. AT least that was the idea. I am not clear on how well it worked out.
The trouble with a 'single national database' for a country the size of the US is it becomes a single point of failure unless it is highly replicated. EVen Denmark's was replicated. As far as I know, Oracle does not have much experience at all in truly replicated databases, other than master/slave copying. Add to that Oracle's track record of borking every large database project they have ever been hired to develop.
Excellent idea. A "Smart Card" that fits in your wallet easily has enough storage for that these days. It is not like you need to have a copy of an MRI from 10 years ago on you at all times, but certainly a few years of doctor visits, test results, prescriptions, etc. The doctor pops it into his reader device, you enter your PIN, and he can see your records.
“Larry Ellison may want to create a central health records database for the United States, but given that he's 78 years old, he'd be very lucky to see the end of the project.”
Of course, I do not know and can only guess what Oracle has, but based on the description of the technology used published by Oracle itself, I can conclude that perhaps Oracle is close to commercializing its product. At the same time, it seems that in this not-SQL database there will be no need for manual classification of information by categories, but the search by meaning. So Larry has a good chance to see this new database within a very few years. And those mistakes that were made are OK, so it is impossible to do new things without trials and failures.
This is what I meant saying “ Oracle has the only solution”, even if others may have it too and Oracle could loose the competition. .
It has been accurately reported that Larry Ellison is one of the top five contributors this election cycle to the candidacies of the major election deniers. Given that fact, why would anyone listen to anything he has to say about the future of Western civilization when he doesn't believe in Western style democracies or the fundamental principles on which they are based? Having worked for this man for 6 years in the early 2000s, I experienced THE most toxic work culture of my entire career. Now he appears bent on taking that culture from inside the four walls of Oracle and implanting it into American politics. The most important thing we can do with regard to American oligarchs like Larry Ellison (and Elon Musk, etc), is to deny them a platform and not listen to a word they say. They should really all go to their private islands, sit quietly in the corner and count their billions, and not try to "buy" the American government..
Our hospital system just signed an agreement to use Cerner. I've heard horror stories about it and about all the extra time it will take to use it compared with our current antiquated system. I know many physicians who are planning on retiring as soon as it gets rolled out. I don't know why it seems like all professional healthcare software seems to be designed with no input from end users.
Unfortunately the centralized model with only a few customers usually means down time, IME. I showed up for an appointment at a major university clinic one day while the whole system (Epic) was down. I waited it out - advantage of being a remote worker - and got to watch the practice shut down for hours, not because they didn't know what to do but because they couldn't get to the patient information. No check in, no review of symptoms, no COVID screening, no allergy information, no medical history... way too much room for malpractice if a patient forgets to mention something.
I toyed with Cerner some years ago and it seemed fine, though I am sure there are many site-specific customizations to make one install more or less usable. Of course trying to teach medical doctors* anything they aren't practiced in, no matter how trivial, feels like teaching cats to sing - there will be a lot of wailing! So hopefully you won't find it as bad as you've heard. :)
* And I mean no disrespect to medical doctors, I don't even think it's inappropriate that all their attention goes to their practice.
"I am sure there are many site-specific customizations to make one install more or less usable."
I'm sure you are right. Unfortunately, I expect that we won't see the benefits of most of the possible customizations/optimizations here.
Epic has just been deployed at a friend's hospital, where he works as an emergency department physician. He says his efficiency has decreased by around 30-50% since it was rolled out. That has a direct impact on patients, as people have to wait longer to be seen, and fewer people can be seen. It's no wonder we're in the middle of a health care crisis here in Canada (though this is just one of the many reasons for the crisis).
I understand the point about the difficulties teaching medical doctors about new tech, but some systems are just shite, even in the hands of the most tech-savvy. One can moan about doctors if one wishes, but they are who will be using the software, so the software had better be designed to be easy to use for physicians. Apple gets it. Makers of most professional medical software do not. I'm looking at you G.E.!
In my not-so-humble opinion, implementing (whether your IT staff wrote the software, or you bought Epic, Cerner, etc.) an Electronic Medical Records system (100% computerized) without a tested and working fallback system is both professional and criminal irresponsibility, and ought involve jail time for all the perpetrators: every executive which approved the system, and the IT staff which installed the system. My reasons for this opinion:
In a manual, paper-and-films-based system, a misfiling affects one, or possibly two patients.
In an EMR system, a system slowdown or downage affects all inpatients, and potentially effects outpatients.
Ego. From (some) managers, "I'm in charge! I make the decisions around here!" From (some) programmers, "I don't care what the users want. I know better. Leave me alone -- I'm designing my masterpiece here."
Add marketers, who in some companies have disproportionate power, coupled with ignorance/disinterest of technical issues, saying, "We'll sell a lot more copies if we do it like this ..." to high-level executives.