Australian State Govt. To Fund iPads For Doctors 97
angry tapir writes "The current premier of the Australian state of Victoria, John Brumby, has promised every doctor in Victoria's public hospital system would be issued with an Apple iPad if his incumbent Labor Government was returned to power in the state's upcoming election."
Response to genuine need or political pandering? (Score:5, Insightful)
his party was committed to giving doctors the tools they needed to provide the best care to Victorian patients.
Having done a few projects with medical institutions of various sizes, my impression is that there are quite a lot of stringent and rather divergent requirements for "tools they need to provide the best care" depending on the specialty, in addition to a ton of general and institution-specific requirements regarding, between others, payments, data security and privacy.
Giving everyone an iPad doesn't strike me like a policy implementation in response to a specific need, but rather as trying to win an influential group with shiny presents.
Are the doctors going to bite on such a small bait?
Re:Corporate sponsorship for elections (Score:3, Insightful)
He is promising iPads because they are popular and people want them. Moreover, they know what one is.
And Apple doesn't control enterprise stuff, which is likely what a hospital would use.
Governments shouldn't buy a product (Score:5, Insightful)
Kavka's toxin puzzle (Score:5, Insightful)
Reminds me of Kavka's toxin puzzle [wikipedia.org]. ...the Political Manifesto. Before an election, a political party will release a written document outlining their policies and plans should they win office. Many of these promises may be difficult or impossible to implement in practice. Having won, the party is not obligated to follow the manifesto even if they would have lost without it.
Yes, because if there's one thing Doctors are... (Score:2, Insightful)
I suggest that if an iPad is indeed critical business tool for a Doctor, he might be able to spring for the six hundred bucks without too much trouble.
He doesn't need John Brumby to buy it for him (or her). In contrast, there are plenty of school kids who could use that sort of investment in technology. Perhaps some of the billions of dollars that were wasted on the latest Public transport fiasco [theaustralian.com.au] could be spent there.
Investment in health care needs more serious consideration than simply buying the doctors more shiny objects.
Re:Corporate sponsorship for elections (Score:4, Insightful)
The App Store isn't the only way to get apps onto iOS devices.
Read up about Enterprise distribution of applications without the app store.
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Enterprise_Deployment_Guide.pdf [apple.com]
Page 63:
You can distribute iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad applications to your users.
If you want to install iPhone OS applications that you’ve developed, you distribute the application to your users, who install the applications using iTunes.
Applications from the online App Store work on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad without any additional steps. If you develop an application that you want to distribute yourself, it must be digitally signed with a certificate issued by Apple. You must also provide your users with a distribution provisioning profile that allows their device to use the application.
The process for deploying your own applications is:
Register for enterprise development with Apple.
Sign your applications using your certificate.
Create an enterprise distribution provisioning profile that authorizes devices to use applications you’ve signed.
Deploy the application and the enterprise distribution provisioning profile to your users’ computers.
Instruct users to install the application and profile using iTunes.
Re:Response to genuine need or political pandering (Score:3, Insightful)
many companies have already issued large number of iPads to their employees for specific purposes, and very successfully so
Yes, this kind of underlines the seeming pointlessness of the discussed political initiative. iPads are promised without a specific purpose and application in mind.
Re:Ignore Victorian politics for a while (Score:3, Insightful)
That isn't a fair comment. Many underutilised branch lines were closed under the "New Deal" but mainline services were made cheaper and more frequent. As a result, patronage actually increased by 20% after the changes. Victorian Labor has a history of doing nothing with rail anyway. They promised a train to Wantirna, scaled it back to a tram line, and then decided not to take in under Eastlink, so it terminates uselessly in Vermont South. They buried the report recommending electrification to Geelong. Unified ticketing in Melbourne was introduced by a Liberal government.
Re:A non story (Score:5, Insightful)
Like the quality of your post, the opposition in the state and federal parliaments is a waste of time. If Baillieu was any good he'd win this election hands down over the horrific failure by the Brumby government regarding the bush fires. Instead we get yet another Liberal scare campaign, when they could be getting down to real issues.
My reference to reckless spending is regarding the Myki system which cost a billion dollars, and counting, to replace a system that wasn't broken. Worse still, the Metcard system it replaced is still required and the public transport network is still unreliable!
If you consider a billion dollars in context: We could have just had free public transport for 1-3 years without a single ticket instead of this failure. That's based on back of a napkin maths but a billion dollars buys a lot of zone 1 dailies. And it's not the only waste I can point to.
Re:Why is it always Apple? (Score:3, Insightful)
Tablet PCs have been around for nearly 10 years. Apple wasn't the first to market with a pad/tablet. They were first to market with one that people actually wanted to buy.
Why does it make sense for large organisations to buy iPads rather than another tablet? For the same reason it makes sense for them to buy Windows PCs as desktops. Because they are the market leader, which means most tablet software will be released for it, most tablet hardware add-ons will be compatible with it, and they can be sure that iPads will be on the market, and fully supported, for a very long time.
Re:Corporate sponsorship for elections (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason it should not be legal is that it is a promise to buy from a particular supplier. It would be OK (not necessarily good policy, but not wrong in the same way) for him to promise to buy tablets from whichever vendor offered the best deal on suitable hardware and software.
Re:Ignore Victorian politics for a while (Score:1, Insightful)
patronage increased because population increased and we have a ridiculously centralized city with inadequate parking so driving in to work isn't a viable option to many commuters.
Taking the best of a bunch of terrible options is hardly glowing praise for our public transport system