I've heard of Drudge Report before, but never really understood it. Who / what does it cater to and what is its function, a sort of one-man curated news reddit?
I'd say his main demographic is your conservative / libertarian who has little to no faith in government. Socially drudge tends to be moderate; fiscally, very conservative. Sort of a "keep your government hands out of my pocket" type attitude.
He heavily influences a lot of conservative politics, as his reach is massive. Many people think he helped drum up Romney support with a specific narrative across his site in the 2012 Republican primary (whether or not he was paid is up to which conspiracy theorist you speak with).
A link on his site can result in millions of page views
During the Elian Gonzales affair, I sequenced some AP photos into an animation (giving a video effect to a series of photos of a kidnapping) and posted them on my website for a few friends to see. The link ended up on Drudge. AP called to object, and the traffic load was so high I couldn't log on to the server to remove the GIF. Had to call the ISP, told the receptionist "hi, I'm the reason your servers are melting down", and she cheerfully transferred me to the company president. He got a big chuckle out of it, the file was deleted, traffic subsided, and I learned what it meant to get linked to by Drudge.
As someone who shares many libertarian views, I don't really feel that they are part of his target audience. He bashed Ron Paul when he was campaigning and he posts articles that often seem to ridicule constitutionalism and libertarian-ism alike.
I started reading the Drudge Report a couple of years ago, but the more I read, the more I feel like he is catering to racists, homophobes, and the other extremists that have destroyed the republican party.
Disclaimer: I share many libertarian views, but I also believe in many things that would be considered "liberal." Dividing politics into clearly defined parties only inhibits honest self-assessment and productive conversation.
Some stats!
Obvious fact: The numbers are roughly proportional. The same crowd come to drudge report on a daily basis without fail. Might look to be overly ambitious claim but the reality might not be far from it.
Drudge numbers are inflated now, and this year due to it being an election year and one where the very people they cater to were trying to knock out the President. It's going to grab a lot of traffic from that.
we're using the standard set of fields that all EMRs will be required to produce. you can def submit a design that includes those AND how you would represent genetics data.
You are using the very same set of fields that all EMR will be required to use by the government?
So if I understand correctly, you are basically doing what you have been told to do? Good for you - call that corporate software development, but not design, creation, startup of whatever.
Regarding your reply, it's not about the "right" way to represent genetics data, but having any way at all to input that - which seems "absent" in the current model, but maybe I haven't dug deep enough.
Also, $50k for the design that will be used for 6 millions potential clients? Hmm it's like 0.0083 cent per client. If you make a piece of software that successful, it's like selling it for 1 cent apiece on the applestore.
So I guess I'll pass on this one.
BTW there is something funny in the article: "You might even end up working with big EMR startups like Practice Fusion."
Well, yey :-/
I'd rather like to create a new EMR company - the one that'll put the others out of business :-)
EMRs and all related systems (PACS/DICOM in radiology which is what I know best, Lab Info Systems, etc.) all interoperate by open (but usually fairly stupid) standards like HL7. They are basically the worst of OSI, ASN.1, etc. all rolled into one. But, they're standards, and there is a huge amount of workflow deployed around them -- $5-10mm imaging devices that speak these protocols, entire labs, huge numbers of doctors trained around them, etc.
There's no way a records presentation system would be useful if it didn't take standards like HL7, ICD9 codes, etc. on the input. There has been a huge effort over the past few years to get small practices onto EHR/EMR (for a variety of reasons...patient care quality and billing/admin cost savings), so anything which didn't work with those standards would be a huge step backward on those efforts as well.
The nice thing is most of these ugly protocols have decent libraries available (some open source, some commercial), so you can build a HIS/EHR/EMR/PACS/LIS/etc. with general software engineering talent and a limited amount of specialty knowledge, but you really do need some experience in the clinical environment (at least as a tech or doing tech support), I think, to build a credible overall system. And to actuall sell larger systems, an MD on the team is really helpful (at least for PACS, a rad or ortho).
That said, being able to 'pretty print' a medical record (on paper, or maybe some kind of interactive format) for patient use or portability outside the system doesn't require a huge amount of clinical knowledge, but it's not enough to replace an EHR.
Please excuse the off-topic rant:
It's my mission right now to change something a little different about EMR design. You're looking at the output. That's wonderful and I am really happy about it. We also need to fix input. EMR/EHR interfaces are mostly terrible; that has significant negative consequences for both patients and providers.
You're looking for an output design that is effective as a physical document. Please consider a follow-up challenge for EMR input UI/UX.
You may already be doing this, but keep a record of all the different ideas you have been coming up with. Do it in a text file or a Moleskin. Then challenge yourself to revisit them after a week. See what you can prune and improve upon. Spend time to polish it. Don't abandon it too early.
I get excited about the ideas that I keep coming back to and keep building off of. If you can stay optimistic about an idea for over a month, then you may be on to something.
VISITS TO DRUDGE 11/27/12
033,621,596 PAST 24 HOURS 1,218,005,142 PAST 31 DAYS 11,345,750,362 PAST YEAR