[ Thanks to G
Johnson for this link. ]
“The software Children’s Hospital installed, by
contrast, was the product of a private company called Cerner
Corporation. It was designed by software engineers using locked,
proprietary code that medical professionals were barred from
seeing, let alone modifying. Unless they could persuade the vendor
to do the work, they could no more adjust it than a Microsoft
Office user can fine-tune Microsoft Word. While a few large
institutions have managed to make meaningful use of proprietary
programs, these systems have just as often led to gigantic cost
overruns and sometimes life-threatening failures. Among the most
notorious examples is Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, in Los Angeles,
which in 2003 tore out a “state-of-the-art” $34 million proprietary
system after doctors rebelled and refused to use it.“And because proprietary systems aren’t necessarily able
to work with similar systems designed by other companies, the
software has also slowed what should be one of the great benefits
of digitized medicine: the development of a truly integrated
digital infrastructure allowing doctors to coordinate patient care
across institutions and supply researchers with vast pools of data,
which they could use to study outcomes and develop better
protocols.”