FileMakerFeller

jpellino said:

My experience with Epic is that they barely talk between instances in different health care systems, you need a new account with each hospital system or practice you deal with, and small shops (OT, PT, home care) can't afford Epic in the first place, so a non-trivial portion of your records have to be hand-carried between providers.  

The standard method for transferring health information electronically is by using a format/protocol known as HL7, which Epic Systems supports. HL7 has been around for about 35 years; think of it like ODBC - every database management system, big or small, supports it to at least some extent. Implementing data transfer via HL7 is not trivial, but it's also not exceptionally hard and there's at least one system (Nextgen Connect, née MIRTH Connect) that offers a free, open source solution.

What you describe sounds like a set of companies where nobody knows how to configure their systems for interoperability, which is unfortunately not unusual in the medical industry.

Note that Apple's Health app uses a newer standard, FHIR, which is gaining adoption throughout the industry (especially now that Apple has chosen to use it). FHIR is XML-based, which makes for more human-readable messages than HL7, but from what I've been told it's not as capable as HL7 yet (although I believe that's more due to some of the tools not supporting FHIR yet than any weakness in the implementation).

JP234 said:

gatorguy said:

JP234 said:

As long as Apple isn't selling that data to third parties, and uses it to improve my user experience, I don't care.

Do you care if Google uses "anonymized" analytics to improve your user experience as long as they don't sell the data to third parties (and they don't)? How about Amazon? Microsoft? 

If Google isn't selling my data to third parties, why is all that clickbait from places or things I've looked at earlier showing up on every page? Just asking how they know if Google isn't telling them.

As for Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, I'm a shareholder in all 3 companies, so whatever makes them money makes me money. And I'm good with that!

There isn't a direct link. The advertiser says "show my ad to people who have seen things like this" and then Google matches the ad to the viewer. They're not technically selling you as an individual to the advertiser, just including you in one or more groups that they then allow advertisers to target.

AppleZulu said:

This won’t succeed. Musk clearly didn’t have a plan for any of this. He was swinging his phallus around for kicks when he threatened to buy Twitter, and then got boxed in legally and contractually, so he had to pony up $44B he hadn’t really intended to spend. 

Unable psychologically to process the humiliation, he did what narcissists do and doubled down. So he moved in with his sink, fired management and quickly learned that $44B alone still doesn’t buy loyalty. So he fired half the company indiscriminately. Then he tried to hire some back, because he actually needed some of the folks he’d already canned. Now he’s done his little ultimatum, trying to change the workforce of an established company into the workforce of a startup, but through threats rather than enticements to work hard for the stock options of a new Next Big Thing. 

So here we are looking at a company with infrastructure teetering on the verge of collapse and a major usage stressor heading straight for it. The few people left who could try to prepare have been sent home for the weekend. When the proverbial rivets pop, the whole thing will cascade down into a heap. 

Soon, Musk will have spent $44B on a logo, some broken, used hardware, and a small workforce consisting of a few who think this is great and the rest who didn’t think three months would be enough time to find a new job. Also, by that point this company will have no income and won’t be a good risk for investment. 

I suppose he could cash out the user data, but how much of that hasn’t been scraped and sold to Big Data already? Probably not $44B worth. 

Musk didn't buy Twitter as a financial investment, he bought it as an investment in human communication (as per his official statement). I think he honestly believes that as long as he can keep up the payments on the debt (from other sources as required) he can do whatever he wants to the company and the service. He's willing to write off the purchase price and the running costs and the more personal sacrifices to get the outcome he's aiming for.

Can he pull it off? Nobody knows yet. He is certainly a determined individual who is more than willing to ignore criticism; that is often a useful thing in such an endeavour. But the potential damage to the enterprise, the people who work within it and the people who use Twitter is immense.

Mike Wuerthele said:

mattinoz said:

10% on top of the usual bulk buy pricing?

Nope, just 10% off. Which is why I'm puzzled about the story.

Twenty-some years ago when I worked for an Authorised Apple Reseller and Repair Centre in Australia, there were never any discounts based on volume. You were either a customer in the Education or Government sectors or you paid full retail - or, more accurately, Apple charged the reseller the same price as always and it was up to the reseller to decide on the final sales price. Resellers that achieved a certain volume level would receive a bonus from Apple that would be applied to the reseller's purchasing account.

If Bloomberg is relying on sources with experience from ten or more years ago, that would explain their attitude to the current situation. I was certainly surprised to read about the discount, but then again I haven't been involved in bulk hardware purchases or sales for a very long time.

Also: Australia competes fairly well on the world stage in IT. Wireless networking benefitted substantially from the work conducted by Australia's CSIRO, for example. Two leading SaaS companies, Atlassian and Canva, are Australian-born.

Just something to think about.