Re: Database design.

[Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com>]

On Tue, 6 Jun 2006, Dude VanWinkle wrote:

> On 6/6/06, Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 6 Jun 2006, Dude VanWinkle wrote:
> >
> > > I interviewed with a company that was taking all of a Dr.'s office and
> > > putting it onto a DB. This was only for eye doctors (opthomologists or
> > > some such) and they had an average of 1 GB per client.
> > >
> > > This included billing, Forms (TONS of forms per visit here in the
> > > states), etc, etc.
> >
> > I still don't see how an eye doctor can amass a gigabyte of data on one
> > person, unless they're storing the forms by doing high-resolution jpgs of
> > them, which is a pretty daft way to store data.
>
>
> Obviously, you havent filled out any american insurance claim forms before ;-)

Very true.
 
> They are storing the forms as entries in a DB (not pictures), and that
> is all the forms for all the visits as well as their prescriptions,
> tests, personal information, communications with other doctors,
> recommendations, billing info and history, etc, etc. Since this is an
> eye doctor, there is no MRI or X-Ray images to be archived.
>
> I will contact the company again and find out whether that was a 1GB
> allowance, or 1GB of actual data that he referred to and get back to
> the list.

If their system requires them to allocate 1 gb of space whether it's used 
or not, that's not good.

> as a side note, you blokes might want to talk with Walmart. Apparently
> they can store the entire Internet two-fold, and they only spent ~40
> mil on the data center:
>
> http://www.joplinglobe.com/local/local_story_148015054/
> <excerpt>
> But Wal-Mart, according to a 2004 New York Times article, had enough
> storage capacity to contain twice the amount of all the information
> available on the Internet. For the technically minded, the exact
> amount was for 460 terabytes of data.
> <excerpt>

300 gb drives cost about $100. You can put four of those in one computer, 
total cost maybe $600. For 460 terabytes, you'd need some 400 of those, 
which would cost $240,000.

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