Wednesday, November 04, 2015

If I Had A Hammer...The SMT Epilogue

PACSGenius has wiped all his posts about SMT and changed his name on AuntMinnie.com to Burt Stone, I guess an allusion to Burt Wonderstone, and his disappearing act. Mr. Ellery himself, the head of Singular Medical Technologies, put a bit of an explanation on the now-defunct thread, but that paragraph, and even Mr. Ellery, have disappeared.

The most poignant punch line of all comes from someone within the radiology practice that spawned this spawn:
They don't know what the Hell they are doing and talking about.

Basically the work station is 4 seperate computers attached to one set of monitors which you can toggle between systems. The worklists are each on a separate computer but you can't pick from it. You have to log on to each PACS separately.

The Powerscribe works with all because its essentially the same hospital system and they share license agreements.

It's far from grounbreaking and after reading their posts and knowing them I have to laugh because they are really wet behind the ears and have very little healthcare experience...

Too funny.
Sadly, the good people of Sunshine Singular won't think any of this is funny. But this is the risk one takes to bring a product to market. Have you ever watched Shark Tank? Those who make the cut to stand before the billionaires already have some degree of success. Even so, I've seen some poor schmucks torn limb from limb by the Sharks. They respect confidence and knowledge, but being superbly accomplished businesspeople, they can see right through bullshit and hubris, and won't tolerate it for a second. SMT wouldn't have survived 30 seconds. Well, I take that back. The Sharks are probably not familiar with this small niche-market, and could possibly have been convinced to invest in this limited, brute-force "solution". They, like many docs and administrative-types who don't have the slightest grasp of informatics, might believe the distortions and out-and-out mistruths that were told about this product.

SMT may well blame me when their little company crashes and burns, but they really shouldn't bother. They didn't do their due diligence before investing a lot of money their "solution". They found that GE wouldn't talk nicely to Agfa and some fly-by-night charged them millions to connect and didn't deliver, so they created this brute-force solution. Maybe it works in their environment, sort of, and maybe not all that well according to someone who actually uses it.  But it is an amateurish, even childish mistake to assume in an uninformed vacuum that such a "solution" is going to make zillions of dollars, and to invest your own and other people's money chasing that dream. I've seen this happen up close and personal, when a friend came up with software that he was certain he would sell to every medical practice in the nation. Didn't happen. Won't ever happen. He and his sponsors are out about $50K. I did try to warn them...

I don't know if self-delusion is uniquely American or not, but I seem to see a lot of it on shows like "Shark Tank" and "America's Got Talent," not to mention IT departments here and there.  You see people who are absolutely, positively, adamently convinced that they have found THE NEXT BIG NEW REVOLUTIONARY TECHNOLOGY or have the greatest act the judges have ever seen, and so on. When their puny accomplishments are rejected by those who know better, these poor folks are so fundamentally shocked and surprised, their facial expressions are absolutely painful to behold. Maybe this is the result of the liberal philosophy giving everyone a trophy for showing up and breathing, but it is pitiful to say the least.

But don't worry. When I get around to creating Dalai PACS, it will be the best thing since sliced bread. Investment opportunities will be limited, so act now!!

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