1999 Happy Visitors; One Less So

Congratulations to visitor number 2000, from Mesa, Arizona. Maybe someone from AuntMinnie.com?

Sadly, not all of my readers seem to be enjoying my musings. "Anonymous" posted this comment on my entry about the KLAS survey just this afternoon:

Did you ever consider that Blogging in a medical environment would be so crude as to bash vendors. Besides, it is easy to jump on a bandwagon of the top 1, 2 or 3 with little market share and history, yet to bash others in a cowardly fashion is outright fake. What is your total combined compensation (including free meals) for promoting the top 3? Just need to know so I can budget for this when we crush them with slow steady forward progress and you turn your vote. This will remain anonymous so long as you continue to hide your identity behind an outrageous title that should belong to people to have acutally contributed something to the medical profession.
Cheers!

Gee, where do I start? I hate to dignify such a posting with a response, but what the heck. I have to note at the outset that Anonymous' IP localizes him to Milwaukie, WI, the home of GE Medical systems. Coincidence? Gotta wonder... As to the rather personal comments....I would just as soon keep my name off of the blog, but my full name is revealed in the AuntMinnie article, so I am not "hiding" behind anything, thank you. If Anonymous had bothered to read some of the other entries, he would have found that I do indeed deny being in any company's pocket. Adding up all dinners and so on received from PACS vendors (which include Agfa, Amicas, Fuji, and GE) over the past five years would yield the grand total of $500. If I can be bought, it would take a lot more than that! Finally, as to my contributions to medicine, I am responsible for the introduction of PET imaging to South Carolina. Tell me, Anonymous, what have you contributed?

Sigh. I guess you just can't please everyone. But I'll keep trying anyway.

I can't directly link Anonymous to GE, and I should mention that GE PACS headquarters is in Chicago. Perhaps Anonymous owns GE stock (I do too, by the way). He is obviously worried about my "bashing" of big-iron vendors, but in reality, the only vendors I "bash" regularly are GE, Fuji, and ScImage (sorry, guys). I don't push Stentor or DR. My only experience with Stentor was at a past RSNA, where I went through an excellent demo, but concluded that the pricing structure was not what was needed for the hospital that ultimately went with Amicas. We called upon DR Systems once to see if they would be interested in providing an "interim solution" for multislice CT reading. They responded that if they couldn't sell us a full system, we were not worth their time.

I "bash" whom I "bash" usually due to my dislike of their interfaces, which is the part of the PACS I actually use. It is clear in many cases that the products were designed and tested by engineering types (I can say that because I am one) and perhaps a few docs who didn't actually try to do their day-to day work with the system. This is why I am calling for an open exchange of ideas about PACS GUI's. Every PACS system has room for improvement, and the more we work together, the better things will be for the industry and end-users alike.

Cheers!