Why software often goes bad (click to enlarge)
By way of introduction, my name is Bob Crimmins, Chief Technology Officer of iMedExchange. I have spent the past 20+ years striving to build truly useful, truly easy-to-use software. For the past six years, my mission has been to build truly useful, truly easy-to-use software for physicians. As my first contribution to the iMedExchange blog, I want to explain a little about the philosophy of iMedExchange and why I am so pleased to be a part of it. In future posts, I look forward to sharing more specific ideas about what we're up to and, importantly, I look forward to hearing you comments.
At the risk of sounding trite and hyperbolic at the same time, I have to say that I am very excited about iMedExchange... and if you are a physician then I think you should be too. Here's why: while I often hear from software vendors that "physicians haven't kept up with technology", iMedExchange believes just the opposite is true -- technology has not kept up with physicians.
By and large, the software industry caters to large, institutional healthcare interests without much consideration of the individual physicians who carry out the business of healthcare every day. In a certain way, you can't blame them... that's where the money is and that's their business. The result is big, complex systems that are expensive, hard to use, hard to support and don't add value to the day-to-day lives of individual physicians. To keep us on track technologically, I propose the following technology mission statement.
iMedExchange Technology Mission Statement 1.0:
1) Ease of use trumps all other design objectives.
2) Always strive to be the most useful place on the web for physicians.
3) If it doesn't add value to physicians then don't do it.
4) Don't assume you know what physicians want -- ask them.
5) The best ideas haven't been discovered yet -- innovate, innovate, innovate.
6) Ease of use trumps all other design objectives.
I welcome your comments about how to improve this Mission Statement.
