Roger is in Singapore, Neil. Why should he be overly interested in what goes in in English NHS Trusts? As we know, different rules apply!

But (and anyway), we're all hoping that you've already done a survey yourself, and are about to publish your findings here!

But what about "you get what you pay for" and "cheapest is not always best".....! It's not perfect but its the best we evaluated, with medusa. I must however say the annual fee is certainly value for money when referenced to the level and quality of support and database development releases.

Depends upon what is meant by "best" ... how about "value for money"?

The cheapest may not always be best, but it will always be, er ... the cheapest!

I have never appreciated the wisdom in going for "big bucks" products (and that includes databases) if they don't actually do what you want, and/or you have to "work around" (rather than enjoy) their features. In that case, surely you may as well have a "lesser" (cheaper) product in the first place. Could it be any worse?

And ... how about an annual fee of £ zero? Why not?

Don't forget that not every biomed is funded out of the taxpayers' pocket!

BTW how much it costs to install the AIMS at your end. What is the number of concurrent users.

But in fairness to the private companies (albeit ECRI is 'not for profit') they need to make an income, and failure for them to do so means the NHS falls behind as the market place options would become under developed.

I agree you need value for money, but how about "pay peanuts, get monkeys". In the current market, (UK and global) it unfortunately costs for the better prodcuts.

As I said before, AIMS is very comprehensive, but the best database out there, and which meets your exact requirements, will ultimately be the one you create yourself!

Yes.

No, sorry guys (and ladies of course), write it yourself? you jest me thinks. While in an ideal world this might be true, in reality it just ain't going to happen. Who has the resource to be able to put the man-hours into it? No one, that's who.

Come on guys, get real.

Wrong again.

Who do you imagine wrote all that code in the first place? Hint:- it doesn't grow on trees, or come courtesy of the Tooth Fairy!

The foundation for most (if not all) of the "industry standard" biomed databases was original code hacked out by some biomed working on a home-grown system someplace.

I seriously doubt that.

Concepts and ideas maybe - but code?
No, I don't see that at all.

After all - most homebrews are coded in excel, foxpro or dbase.

... and what's wrong with Access (I presume you meant), FoxPro or dBASE? What else would they be coded in?

Take a close look at HECS (.dbf data files), for example.

Notice too that I did say "foundation" and "original code"!

Just for the record, I know of a commercial system that was coded in C (but that would have been at least twenty years ago now). And, in case anyone is wondering (?) I also knew the coder (not me, I hasten to add).

OK (and just to forestall the argument) ... here's the challenge:- anyone who has these "industry standard" programs (and who also has the nous to be able to do it), take a look at the file types (or failing that, the data files) and let us know their findings! That is, see if you can work out what language the program was coded in, and/or which format do the data files follow?

And, of course, if anyone has access to the source code (which I very much doubt ... and therein lies the rub) ... well, then we could know for sure!