Outside the vacuum of technology (can it be done?), it seems to me that the role that policy plays when it comes to the actual rollout of self-driving cars (should it be done and how?) is vastly underrated. This seems to be the real bottleneck in mass adoption - improvements in technology will have diminishing returns after a certain point.
For example, things like getting companies to agree to a unified standard at a government/industry level & determining frameworks for liability all seem to be as important (and perhaps difficult) as eking out another 0.00001% increase in safety.
Like qudat said, the level of rules and regulations required to enter the market are indeed pretty high, but I don't think they are insurmountable. And industry connections certainly do help in getting contracts, but people will generally listen if you have good ideas.
The people making the purchasing decisions are almost always pretty removed from day-to-day usage of clinical software (and the bigger the company, the more true this is).
But how will you present to them that your new product is "better" than that of the incumbent's? You can say, "our product can do X feature 10x better than another product", but if they reply with "unless your product has dark mode for a select number of physicians who live in WA and NY state, it's going to be a no-go. We already have another quote from someone else who will do this for us", what are you going to do? You may resist at first, but in order to win the business, you too will likely repeat this process ad-nauseum, until your "MVP" becomes just a "VP".
These decision-makers are also cautious about "new" technology (and rightly so, for the most part). Since if something does go wrong with patient data, it is considered catastrophic - and who will be to blame then?
Dendi is a healthcare software company that is working on developing the next-generation clinical laboratory information systems (LIS).
We are a small and technical team. We are looking for startup-oriented Python developers to help us execute on our vision and take our product to the next level.
We are also looking for people who are comfortable with uncertainty and open-ended questions, as the position comes with a significant equity stake (cofounder level).
Preferred Qualifications:
- Native level of English proficiency, both verbal and written
- Bachelor’s degree in computing or a related field
- Advanced expertise with Python
- Experience with Django
- Experience in designing REST APIs
- Experience with SQL databases (PostgreSQL) and relational database design
- Experience with Linux
- Experience with healthcare or laboratory settings is a big bonus
The biggest issue is resentment, although I've personally gotten over it for the most part.
The key phrase of the article being "secret" - it took me until junior year of college to realize that the reason a lot of my classmates could eat out wherever they wanted and buy whatever clothes they wanted was due to their parents funding their lifestyle. In comparison, I struggled a lot in college financially (even on a full ride scholarship), as well as fitting in with my peers both academically and culturally.
When I had asked my friends how they were able to afford everything, they always told me that they had "money saved up", which I legitimately believed and never really questioned.
It really wasn't until I started working and my friends would reminisce about college that I realized that the "money saved up" was really their parents money. Then some of my friends started buying homes: they had "money saved up" and "invested wisely", they claimed, but this time I was wiser because we were working the same job at the same company, and I knew that they spent more money than me.
When I started my own company, some of my friends in the tech community said something along the lines of, "how much money are your parents gonna invest?" - which is the same kind of assumed privilege that left me feeling so bitter before. I've definitely grown out it since then and have taken steps to stop comparing myself to others as much, but it's human nature to do so and I think my story will ring true with a lot of people with similar backgrounds.
Ultimately, there's nothing inherently wrong with any of this, but I did spend a lot of time saying no to a lot of things (as a result of not having time and/or money) and feeling inadequate as a result. And before anyone says I should "make better friends" - I think our own personal narratives are always biased to sound more self-sufficient than we actually are, so no, I don't blame anyone either.
Who I am to judge what innovations are useful or useless to society? In a sense, one could very well argue that the market cap or valuation of a company is at least a decent proxy for "usefulness".
With that said, however, my personal opinion is different. Although I think innovation of any kind is great for society, what I'm frustrated by is the relative mindshare of where we focus our attention on.
I like to use the term "farsighted" - many people in SV are able to see very far distances into the future, but ignore some of the immediate problems that are right under our noses. That's what I'm frustrated by.
For example, things like getting companies to agree to a unified standard at a government/industry level & determining frameworks for liability all seem to be as important (and perhaps difficult) as eking out another 0.00001% increase in safety.