Medical clinics based on MS-DOS developed in the 1980s continue to be used in hospitals in South Australia

    The product developer requires a court to prohibit the use of long-obsolete software with a license that ended a year ago.


    Where DOS is, there are diskettes, and without it

    , the South Australian Department of Health plans to continue using Chiron's medical software platform in smaller hospitals. The old software continues to work even though the license for this product ended in March last year. System developers need to stop working with Chiron, because physicians, in fact, use the system illegally.

    But the South Australian government supports doctors. Officials say that the ban on the use of Chiron can affect patients whose life and health depends on this software package. In turn, the developers of Chiron decided to prove their case in court. The software product continues to work in 64 hospitals in the region.

    Chiron is a MS-DOS based platform . It was developed back in the 80s of the last century, and began to be massively installed in South Australia hospitals in the early 90s. Now the system itself is outdated morally. But doctors have no way out yet - it is impossible to replace the old software platform on all hospital computers at once. The fact is, Chiron stores a wealth of information about thousands of patients. This is a history of the disease, information about allergic reactions of a person to medications, notes from doctors. If such data disappears, the patient’s health and even life will be endangered. For example, a person will take pills that cause him an allergic reaction, which can be fatal.

    Chiron was developed by the Working System. The company claims that it updated its software back in 2003, and in the current situation there is no fault. On the contrary, it is the fault of the officials who did not take care of timely updating the software of computers in hospitals. On renewal, the authorities of South Australia were 13 years old, and only now the government of the region has recovered.

    The company also claims that the software license cannot be renewed, since Chiron is too old software that is no longer supported. The company's management said that officials in 2014 reported on the search for alternative software.

    Officials say that there have been problems with the supply of the new system, called EPAS. This platform is based on Windows, there is technical support from the developer. However, she now works in only three hospitals in South Australia.

    The trial of this case will begin in December.

    Now in some hospitals in Australia there is another outdated software package called OACIS. It was established in hospitals in 1995, and since then, physicians have continued to work with this platform. So far there are no problems with it, the developer continues to create new modules and maintain the main system. But the license for this software will also end soon, and who knows if officials will be able to quickly solve this problem.

    I note that this situationnot something unique . For example, in the US, nuclear arsenal management is performed using floppy disks and long-obsolete software. For the first time, computers such as IBM Series / 1 were integrated into the infrastructure of nuclear arsenals back in the 70s of the last century, and they have been used since. Such systems help control functions related to intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombers and some other objects. And in the departments of finance, commerce, health, and US veteran affairs, computers of the 80s and 90s are working, respectively, such hardware and software are no longer supported by the manufacturer.

    The situation is similar in the medical and educational institutions of the CIS. In many organizations, employees work with software and hardware that is ten years old or more.

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