I was in the ED the other day and noticed that they use a mix of Windows 7 and Windows 10. My question is two part.
- Do you know of hospitals using Linux?
- Besides legacy software and unwanted downtime, is there any reason why they wouldn’t use Linux?
Software for equipment and software for imaging etc. I work in healthcare. I’d love to use Linux but we’re stuck on software that is based on Java from 8 years ago, as the newer version is not compatible with some older equipment. Add to that, the newer version costs $500 per user to upgrade with no additional features, and this is just for one medical camera, that treats the camera like a webcam. The problem is how it stores images is in a custom database, through a server. Otherwise, the Java part should be easy enough.
Medical equipment is super expensive and they only make a few thousand of some of them. So, the software is super expensive too and not updated nor is there versions for Mac or Linux. Heck, most of them don’t officially support windows 10 or 11. It’s really frustrating too, as most are really a simple bridge that connects to the machine to give instructions or receive data. They are not usually drivers, but send data over the network. An open format would suit better for security too, as all this old software will be pretty leaky.
Hell, poorer clinics use old versions of EMR/EHR software that they bought in '08 and host locally. Some of that shit barely supports Windows 7. Some of that software doesn’t support things like HL7 properly so getting the data out and into a newer one can be cost prohibitive in and of itself because you’ve got to pay someone to write a translator for a shitty database in a format that was purposefully confusing to keep vendor lock in for a vendor that went tits up a year later.
I mentioned before that I have a lot of certificates for a lot of those companies that no longer exist. If it wasn’t soul crushing I could probably make a decent living just moving people from those systems. But my soul is already a shriveled piece of garbage and I don’t want to purposely squeeze the last little bit of juice out just yet.
Helped my dad do tech support for a doc office. Even simple stuff like glucose meters barely worked on windows 7, and broke with windows 10. The web portal they used required a specific version of internet explorer to function. I think the biggest issue is always going to be how slowly these devices work in terms of drivers and software compatibility. For security and cost reasons, I’d guess.
It would be the same if they used Linux, they’d require something like Red Hat 6.0. 😄
The medical world is technically illiterate and handles a lot of money so the vendors take advantage of that to do heavy lock-in. Everything is tied down to super specific software versions, everything is proprietary, and you pay through the nose for any change.
There’s a reason that stuff is ideally on its own separate vlan to isolate it as much as possible from the network too
