Yes, I very much agree with all of the above. First, though, let me state for the record that Amazing Charts is NOT in any talks about being purchased or acquired in any capacity whatsoever. (In fact, I've not even heard that rumor - where did it come from?)
That said, I too share your frustration with us not having completed the features that are sorely needed. I truly apologize for this delay. In a moment, I will address our plan to remedy this.
As to why the delay, Wayne is mostly correct. We have thus far refused to be beholden to investors and I have required Amazing Charts not to take on any debt (so I can sleep at night). So while our low cost means there isn't a ton of cash available for R&D, that isn't currently the reason for our delay as we have enough on hand to be moving much faster than we are. (A few years ago this was the issue.)
The real problem, as I see it, is actually two-fold. First, I remain adamant that the program be simple to install and intuitive for a physician and their staff to use - without needing an IT person, training, or even a dedicated server (as nearly all our competitors require). This takes a lot of extra time sorting out the installation issues that Windows tends to cause (which have multiplied dramatically with Vista and our move to SQL Server as our backend database). The current version - oh so close to being done - has this new backend database and is thus quite stable and capable of scaling up as a practice grows. This "simple and intuitive" requirement, however, has made the move to SQL Server a 9 month project instead of the 3 months for which I had planned.
The other issue is that I have been in control of each iteration of the Amazing Charts code - rather than using the classic approach to development of project managers, developers, QA, source control, etc. I have required, since I first started writing the code in 2001, that I must understand each line of programming. This came about since I was the one who had to debug issues as and when they arose.
This means, though, that I take all this code being written by our 2.5 programmers, and then I have to put it into our codebase, compile it, test it, rework it, retest it, etc. As you can imagine, this has significantly slowed the development cycle as the program has grown, especially when it comes to complex additions that "touch" a number of other areas of Amazing Charts (such as Practice Management, which is basically an entirely new program that must be deeply integrated into Amazing Charts). In other words, I am the bottleneck.
Okay, so what's the solution?
First, we need to release V4 (hopefully the first week of Feb). Next, our e-prescribing must be improved and better integrated into Amazing Charts - as most of us need to use it if we want the lousy Medicare carrot being offered this year (and stick in a few years to come). Happily, most of this programming is complete and needs to just be added and tested.
At the same time, CCHIT has unfortunately become more than just a silly annoyance since Medicare will soon be tying reimbursement rates to whether the note was documented with a CCHIT certified EHR. So as much as CCHIT is mostly BSHIT, it seems we have to become CCHIT certified. But CCHIT requires we find a way to add literally hundreds of bells, whistles, and
annoyances without screwing up our beautifully simple software. My goal is to have both e-RX and CCHIT complete in Q1 of this year.
Now for how we are changing our process. Instead of simply doing these in series, the plan is to have different development teams also working on the health maintenance/registry functionality and practice management at the same time, so that much of the coding/design/testing/recoding, etc., can occur simultaneously.
Of course this means a new approach to the development cycle. It is not, I have learned the hard way, as simple as adding more programmers - we need to bring in project managers, a better testing and quality assurance processes, source control, and teams of developers. These are big changes and have big costs, both of which Amazing Charts has been planning and saving for over the last 6 months as we realized that our slow development cycle is unacceptable.
So, in summary - I hear you! We are not being acquired, but we are outgrowing our start-up company mindset and are thus implementing a more robust and experienced development process that we truly hope will allow us to overcome this barrier.
More on this topic as soon as V4 is officially released. Thanks for your patience!
Jon
