Last StatLAN workstation removed from MUH
Actually, it was CCIT’s Tom Fennell who did Father Time’s dirty work. He pulled the plug. As the monitor screen blinked black, the fan motor slowed to a silent whimper. Expected but missing were reminiscent strains of music from 2001: A Space Odyssey. But then, few in the vicinity were old enough to remember or appreciate that late-60s classic. Fennell loaded the yellowed electronic cadavers on a hand truck and rolled them to the StatLAN boneyard in a vacated room in the Clinical Science Building. “I programmed most of these machines to run on StatLAN,” he said, as he stacked another lifeless monitor, its cord and detached plug hanging limply. With systems dismembered and organized by body parts, keyboards were piled here, monitors there and CPUs against the other wall. The dusty circuitry of each CPU, laughably slow by current standards, leaves a legacy of more than a decade of reliable, DOS-based service providing laboratory, radiology and pharmacy information to MUSC caregivers and handling admission, discharge and transfer (ADT) functions on the wards. A few StatLAN workstations remain in other areas such as Children’s Hospital, the Institute of Psychiatry, Charleston Memorial Hospital and Rutledge Tower. The Emerald project team estimates that the last — truly, The Last — StatLAN workstation will be removed by mid-December. “Although the StatLAN software could be upgraded to Y2K compliancy, the server hardware is not compliant, and the vendor will not provide support for this system beyond January 31, 2000,” said Dave Northrup, CCIT director of health care computing. He explained that was the reason for StatLAN’s retirement before the end of this year, he said. For more information regarding StatLAN retirement or the Oacis system, including how to get Oacis training or sign-on codes, see <http://emerald.musc.edu> or call the CCIT Help Desk at 792-9700. |