Clojurians Log v2

The incumbents are trying to keep control but I dont think its possible for much longer. Their business model in the UK depends on selling software to huge hospitals. As healthcare in UK fragments you have started to see smaller companies with own software gain footholds. Your experience is truly impressive!

Alot of medtech is focussed on cool and sexy stuff but I feel the actual day to day healthcare software used in the UK is appalling. I think great efficiency gains could be made by building better healthcare software for day to day use.

But getting investment for “lets make the day job easier” does not sell.

Interesting so because the domain is locked down from new competition spinning up easily, all existing parties just keep the status quo. Yeah that's tough.

I've been a Clojure dev for about 7 years professionally. Before that I did Java. The domains I've been involved with include military contracting with the intelligence community, the mortgage industry, and cybersecurity. They also have included a little bit of bioinformatics with Arizona State University in partnership with Mayo clinic. I did some contract work as an extension to my capstone project while I was there.

I really want to build a startup around Clojure, but I haven't found or defined a compelling problem that needs solving that's worth (1) building a business around and (2) where the competition isn't already lightyears ahead of me. So I'm keeping my ear to the ground for ideas. Hence my curiosity.

Good luck!

> But getting investment for “lets make the day job easier” does not sell. Absolutely. I've seen that myself. You need something more than just efficiency or quality of life improvements in order to get traction.

What are the top two biggest challenges in med tech?

The question is too oversimplified and dependent on where you are in the world. I would say for me in western world: regulatory & alignment aims (regulation holds back everything & Ive seen examples of “innovation” not actually benefitting patients.

Whats ur opinion on this?

Consult lawyers where necessary

I don't really have an opinion. I was just curious about the problems you were trying to solve.

One opinion more from me: the book Getting Clojure by Russ Olson is fantastic, I prefer it over brave & true

And this might be just me, but when I was new I remember thinking that surely all clojure programs must use core.async... and that's not the case. Don't think you have to fit all your problems to core.async, because it might not actually be fruitful

I misunderstood - my apologies. Developing medtech is one thing. My current bug bears are numerous but seem to revolve around how most of healthcare software seems to have been developed by copying the paper trail that existed in years prior. I came across lean management over the last decade which led me to domain driven design in sofrware. It made so much sense & I cant see why no one has done it properly in healthcare. I have found the incumbents are so powerful & the regulatory requirements to enter the market are so big that it stops others from entering the market & has meant there is no drive to improve. I have offered to help incumbent companies for free but there has been no uptake. Ive offered to pay to have software made (e.g. prior to covid I offered to build remote consultation platform but my hospital said no). So I decided earlier this year to see if I can learn some programming and begin solving small problems at work. If it takes off Ill see if I can commercialise it perhaps? May I ask whats your background?