
Show HN: Barnett, a design proposal for an extensible EHR system, and my thesis - JusticeJuice
http://barnett.surge.sh/
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JusticeJuice
So for my masters in design, I explored healthcare software, particularly the
type which deals with patient medical records.

Healthcare software is a paradox to me, because it's so important to our
society, but it's just kinda .... shit. After doing interviews and surveys, I
can safely say that doctors and medical professionals feel the same. The
software my GP uses was literally first put in place when I was born, and it
hasn't changed since then.

There are many factors why healthcare software is bad, but one thing is for
sure - most health IT systems are huge, complicated, monoliths. Most medical
practices have a single system which does literally everything. This makes it
super hard to swap out parts of the system to make improvements - you can't
just improve say, the appointment management system without touching anything
else - you have to do it all at once.

This makes 'upgrading' your healthcare software, stupidly hard, and stupidly
expensive. The reality is that a doctor with the worlds best software, and a
doctor with the worst will probably see the same amount of patients in a week
- it's hard to justify when the cost can literally be in the
[billions]([http://barnett.surge.sh/welcome/intro.html](http://barnett.surge.sh/welcome/intro.html))

So what's the future? I think there's three options.

1\. Nothing changes, we keeping doing as we have for the last 30 years or so.

2\. We break up the complexity of these systems, allowing for faster,
iterative improvement. This is where my design proposal aims to sit.

3\. A leap frog technology comes along, which either has huge value, or is
super easy to implement. Machine learning and modern AI could be this, but
it's a long shot, and cultural challenge.

So yeah, this is my thesis, hope you find it as interesting as I did.

