Healthcare, plan and simple.
Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?
21–30 of 79 posts
Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?
#22Immigration processing is one, atleast in US.
I've still not understood why it takes 4-5 years to USCIS office to grant or deny residency of an applicant. How can that process be so slow? All papers and evidences are submitted on day one. Then why it takes 4-5 years to process back-log applications and then process yours.
I know there is quota per country for per year. But not all quotas are full by all countries. Why can't they do shuffling and do dynamic quota management?
This inefficiency is frustrating to many individuals, so definitely need some technical innovation to process things efficiently.
Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?
#23Education
Agreed, but that's pretty broad. Are we talking:
-Learning materials? ie- textbooks -Learning software? ie- someone just kill blackboard already
Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
The medical industry needs (good) software that helps with diagnosis. This covers mental health also. You have symptoms of problem and it helps narrow down. Need a massive database of all known diseases as well as symptoms / remedies. Chart location data for origin of specific disease, (less likely to be rabies if Australia etc) and probability from all factors. Would require huge amounts of data as well as many man…
You also need doctors to be willing to accept the software. They may not since they may feel that it makes their job look "easy" and will therefore cut into their incomes.
First, you need software that is actually helpful. This means that it has to assist me with creating and ranking differentials that I wouldn't otherwise have pieced together. I have yet to see any software like this.
Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?
#25Education
Absolutely but in education, like other industries, any technological innovation cannot succeed on its own.
Immediately comes to mind is political change (political in the sense of the interaction between a governing body and the people/users). Usually this involves a nontransparent decision process by a centralized power. This thread was particularly enlightening: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=803287
Also in education, one cannot forget the social element. Any game changing innovation today will likely embody some web2.0 ideals.
Not only does it contribute to the spread of innovation. I hate to use the word viral but in today's world it likely will have to spread virally through the internet. Reminds me the adoption of the printing press, arguably the greatest educational innovation, was really helped by pornographic material.
What really interests me in the web2.0 and education space is crowd sourcing. Not only Wikipedia but Wikibooks.
Edit: Expanded on web2.0
Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?
#26Software development. And no, that's not a joke. We really are roughly where we were in the 70's, we have not been able to make good use of the increase in machine power. It would be nice to see something really fresh. I'm holding out for 'fleet', or something like it. A radical departure from what we think is 'best practice' and the ways to do things. Something that will turn software development into a true enginee…
but that's a culture problem and not a technology one. (I don't know what this 'fleet' you speak of is, however)
http://fleet.cs.berkeley.edu/docs/ivan.talk-the.fleet.archit...
You think software is not technology ?
Throwing away the structure that we have today and rethinking software from the ground up is definitely technology, not culture.
Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?
#27As someone who works as an IT person in the Mental Health industry I'd nominate that industry. Mental Health has all the problems of regular health care times 10. To give the most basic example, there is no formalized charting system in the Mental Health Industry. You have standardized notes that are turned into the county but that's about it. The industry I work in (treatment of abused children who have been removed…
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Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?
#28As someone who works as an IT person in the Mental Health industry I'd nominate that industry. Mental Health has all the problems of regular health care times 10. To give the most basic example, there is no formalized charting system in the Mental Health Industry. You have standardized notes that are turned into the county but that's about it. The industry I work in (treatment of abused children who have been removed…
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Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?
#29Healthcare, construction, K12 education are three tidepools that a lot of IT innovation has left behind over the last 30 years. None of them need invention, they need to import and adapt working innovations from other fields.
Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?
#30Immigration processing is one, atleast in US. I've still not understood why it takes 4-5 years to USCIS office to grant or deny residency of an applicant. How can that process be so slow? All papers and evidences are submitted on day one. Then why it takes 4-5 years to process back-log applications and then process yours. I know there is quota per country for per year. But not all quotas are full by all countries. Wh…
That's because it is a deterrent.