Comment by devs1010 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by devs1010 | Hacker News Reader

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Yes, and hospitals have arcane policies / IT departments, my dad is a doctor and the hospital he works at still has Internet Explorer 6 installed on all computers there and they refuse to upgrade it for fear it might break compatibility with some ancient software program they use they access through it. He wants me to create some little software program to see if he can get them to use it when the main system goes down but it has to work in IE6 so its kind of a nightmare and I've been dragging my feet on it because of this... its things like this that make dealing with healthcare such a pain in the ass.

Thinking about this more, its actually a bit scary if I do create something and he is able to get them to use it as I could be opening myself up to a lot of liability. I figure, as a doctor, he should be aware of all this but not 100% sure how up on this he actually is, maybe I should get him to sign something having him take full ownership and responsibility of the software

>they refuse to upgrade it for fear it might break compatibility with some ancient software

It will break, in horrible and unknown ways, and even if it didn't if the company supporting it got wind that you used a different version of IE, or heaven forbid Firefox, that's probably enough to deny support. It's probably not even ancient software, they might have purchased it in the last couple of years. Medical software has to be the absolute worst made software on the planet.

I think it may even go beyond that, where they have even stipulated what other software could be run on the machine. I do know, for example, that they HAVE to run XP, nothing newer, or it would void their support, etc.. its really insane how companies can get away with that, I don't even understand how for a web app (it uses a Java applet, so I guess it goes beyond a regular "web app", but still..) they can demand this sort of control over the end user's system.

It seems like there aught to be some sort of liability for mandating insecure practices for your customers.

> the hospital he works at still has Internet Explorer 6 installed on all computers there and they refuse to upgrade it for fear it might break compatibility with some ancient software program

Meanwhile your ability to do everything else breaks through shear attrition.

Why can't you code it for chrome and have the computer have multiple browsers on it?

its forbidden by their IT department, I don't know the whole picture, as I'm just going by what information my dad was able to pry out of them, but I think they basically have barebones machines with nothing but essential software and something such as a browser other than IE 6 isn't on that list and I guess you would have to move mountains to get them to approve it because apparently they haven't moved into this century with everyone else and are stuck in the past.

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