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Comment by tyre | Hacker News Reader

We sell to governments, which is similar to healthcare.

I cannot stress this enough: technology is not the hard part.

Do they have outdated software? Yes.

Can you build better software? Yes.

None of that matters if you can't get it into their hands. Procurement is the hard part. Can you empathize with the needs, fears, desires, quirks, and crazy of ten different stakeholders? Pry proprietary API specs from the cold-dead hands of one-off contractors? Educate users who's technological proficiency peaked at SMS to manage a full-featured SaaS product in 2017?

Don't focus on the software. That isn't the hard part. People are the hard part. People are always the hard part.

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I think the point of this project is to replace the people, not necessarily to make software for people to use. Software is just means to an end.

If that is true, how is a pilot project in the developing world going to help at all in that sense? It doesn't seem like it is particularly relevant to the goal of reducing bureaucracy in the United States. Or do they really believe making a software platform is the missing piece here?

Nothing in the OP mentions US at all. It explicitly says "governments" in plural.

I didn't see anything in OP about the goal being to reduce bureaucracy in the United States. Everything in OP seems explicitly global.

> I think the point of this project is to replace the people

No. Not at all.

The point of this project is to create trust; trust that healthcare consumers can get the services they need, and trust that government will spend healthcare dollars judiciously.

Ideally, I think you need to replace both concurrently. Consider Uber for example. They didn't sell the app concept to the existing taxi companies and the taxi companies didn't hire piecemeal staff, it was a complete alternative.

Might not be a way in all cases, but if you offer people a new system (people and software) that is a viable alternative, they will start to jump ship.

This does seem like the way things will need to go. The system may need to break down completely in order to be recreated. Perhaps it will start in a state with sufficient size to achieve price bargaining power.

Perhaps some combination of eliminating medical school tuition, exemption from liability, and long term contracts could be used to recruit the talent.

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