Next year I will be lecturing at the AVMA meeting. The title of the talk I am asked to give is “Getting Veterinarians to Care about Open Standards.”
It would appear that the Veterinary Informatics society is frustrated (as I am) by the lack of interest the veterinary community has in supporting open standards of information exchange.
The informatics society asked me because of our success with getting DICOM adopted as a standard in veterinary imaging. Although many veterinarians don’t quite know what DICOM is, they know they have to have it and won’t (knowingly) buy a machine that does not support DICOM standards.
Warning: this post has the potential to upset you and make you unsubscribe from our newsletter or stop visiting this site. Ill take my chances but I really hope you don’t get upset. Please read it at your own risk.
My thesis about how to get the veterinary community to support open standards.
My thesis is simple. The need for open standards must be framed in a way that veterinarians and vendors understand. Based on our DICOM experience, vendors primarily understand two things. The first is sales they lose. The second is sales they win.
The trick is to get veterinarians to give sales to vendors who support open standards and take sales away form vendors who do not. The vendors will do what the vets want. All they need to do is ask.
Unlike vendors, veterinarians understand a lot of things. Vets, however, are busy and only react to a few things. The things that they understand and react to are dying animals, owners who have an itchy Yelp.com finger, lost revenue, and finding that they are trapped by their vendor and cannot get out without spending loads of hard earned money. Open standards has the potential to help with the last two.
In the future, I will give you numerous examples to prove the point that open standards are beneficial for the veterinary community. For now, just accept the fact that failing to select digital systems and/or practice management information systems that utilize open standards of information exchange may leave you in the unenvious position of finding yourself trapped by your vendor and spending loads of hard earned money to extract yourself from the situation. Furtheremore, the failure of the veterinary community to adopt open standards may delay innovation and integration in veterinary practice management and digital radiography software.
So, how do we get the vets on board without boring them to death.
Explaining what DICOM and other open standards are will induce the audience to break out a quiver of bicycle spokes and poke out their eyes. Giving 45 minute lectures about what might happen in the future if they fail to adopt these standards will put everyone who can still see to sleep. The problem with all of this is open standards business is that open standards serve to prevent issues IN THE FUTURE and create system flexibility IN THE FUTURE. Open standards seem unnecessary until it is too late.
Talking about open standards is kind of like talking about skin cancer prevention to a group of teenagers living in San Diego. Going surfing and hanging at the beach is much more important than worrying about a melanoma growing on their nose when they are 60.
Here are a few ideas I have. As you will see, they will get the point across but I am not sure I can use them in a talk. You will also see that I need your help.
A snappy analogy: Perhaps I could base my lecture on an analogy that portrays the vendors who shun open standards as a group of pederasts in a van on a school playground giving away candy to unsuspecting children (veterinarians).
The analogy is actually (unfortunately) a good one. On the outside, that van and candy might look good pretty good to an unsuspecting child who does not know better than to get in the van. We all know, however, that once they are in the fan the fun and games are over.
Accurate but a little crass.. how about a rant… Fortunately, everything I would rant about is present in the following video. Please watch the video and think “veterinarian” every time you hear “apple fan boy” and think “practice management software” every time you hear “Steve Jobs” or “Apple.” Here is an excerpt: "the reason we have had such colossal growth [in the internet] is because of an open platform…if you do invest in an closed platform it will come back and bite you RIGHT IN THE ASS.” You know you want to click this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d24sPhwSKs
Maybe yelling at people is not the best idea. How about we continue the candy analogy an add in some bizarre humor just for effect. This image is titled “Don’t take Candy from Strangers.” Perhaps we should not take closed or proprietary systems from veterinary vendors.
I told you I needed help on this one. Please visit us on Facebook and let me know how you would try to get the point across to veterinarians. Open standards are important. Without them, you risk getting in that van looking for free candy. We all know that there is no free candy in the van.
