Is Firefox Appropriate For Healthcare Now?

Posted by Martin Peacock in Blog      No comments

Jun
26

The last few days has seen a flurry of activity around the release of Firefox version 5.  Not all of it positive.  In fact, for enterprises – including healthcare institutions of any significant size – quite negative.

The release of Firefox 5 has, in the eyes of Mozilla, signalled the end of life (EOL) for Firefox version 4 – which means no more security updates.  It is expecting users that continue to use Firefox to upgrade to version 5 if they require security updates.  The new-style aggressive release cycle that Mozilla have put in place (not by any means a bad thing in itself) means security conscious users must go through a major-release upgrade every 3 months.

But- for enterprise users – that is nigh on impossible.  Before any major release upgrade all (or at the very least all critical) browser-based applications must be tested on the new platform.  It is inevitable that some will suffer some level of failure which must be relayed to vendors to implement corrective action.  That process requires time, resources, and on occasion, additional funding for upgrade licenses.  That this process (particularly the vendor-contributed part) is difficult is precisely why IE 6 still lurks balefully.  Even if this occurs – in the meantime there are still no security patches for the version actually installed.

To insist that this process be followed every three months is insane.

For vendors in healthcare and other regulated industries the vista is even worse.  I am currently building a product which – while currently can just about squeeze past certification as a medical device – will almost certainly later this year be classified as a medical device (at least in EU).  I do not have a problem with that – I firmly believe all software in any clinical context should be regulated (although I don’t think the medical device classification scheme does software QA processes little justice).  But I cannot rationally promote the product as suitable for use on a platform which either changes every 3 months or languishes in a security limbo.

Does it matter?  Do the browsers not all support HTML 5 with the Canvas tag?  Yes, they do. But Safari and Opera are still niche browsers so expecting those to fill in the gap is effectively ditching the ‘zero-footprint’ aspiration, and AFAIK Safari doesn’t support WegGL on Windows.  Microsoft has quite roundly criticised WebGL as a browser-based 3D rendering technology.  The Microsoft arguments have been roundly – and rightly – rebutted by Mozilla but it seems likely that IE will be, at best, a late adopter of WebGL.  Since 3D presentation is squarely in my product roadmap, I must reconsider building on WebGL and instead look at Silverlight.

So – reminiscent of the bad days 8-10 years ago, but realistically – I’m building a product for IE.  Unless something changes.

There are a number of things that could make this situation better:

• Mozilla could volte-face on this issue and continue to provide security updates.  From the language used in various communications that seems unlikely.
• Given the language, it is perhaps more possible that Mozilla mirror the Ubuntu-style release pattern of Long Term Support (LTS) releases every 4 or 8 non-LTS releases. Those speaking publicly for Mozilla so far have distanced themselves from this however.
• Of course, Firefox is Open Source Software, which, in principle, anyone can support.  It is quite conceivable that a commercial entity appears to back-port security fixes to the equivalent of an LTS release.  That entity could easily be a commercial wing of Mozilla itself.
• Microsoft could change their stance on WebGL.  That wouldn’t fix the Mozilla release cycle issue but would be a small help.

For the present, however, it would appear ‘zero-footprint’ ≡ IE

Announcing Fidelity – Support for DCM4CHEE

Posted by Martin Peacock in Blog      No comments

Jun
21

Inflection Technologies are happy to announce a new range of support packages for the inestimable open source archive software – DCM4CHEE. Unquestionably one of the most robust and feature-full archives (either proprietary or open source) in the market, it powers both open source and proprietary PACS installations in thousands of Hospitals around the world.

Increasingly, Hospitals are looking to augment their existing PACS installation with an archive sourced independently of their current vendor.  There are a number of reasons why this may be:

• For some installations, much historic data is held offsite with a per-study charge for retrieval.  A seperate, cost-effective archive on commodity hardware can allow for historical data to be made available without incurring such charges.
• The capital cost of expanding on-site storage can with many vendors be at an unreasonable premium.
• Migrating to a new vendor can be a fraught process unless all the image data is held on an open, standards-based archive.

One of – if not the – most popular option for acheiving just this is the open source archive software DCM4CHEE.  It is unquestionably one of the most robust and feature-full archives (either proprietary or open source) in th emarket.

A barrier, however, to implementation has been a lack of formal support and services options.  This is why we are offering the Fidelity range of support packages for DCM4CHEE – for your peace of mind and to facilitate your efforts to take back control over your data.

Click here for more information.