As you mentioned Trish engaging other companies in possible "pie expanding" (mutually beneficial) collaborations and partnerships often results in repeated trips around the the merry-go-round with little to show for it. The collaboration meeting with Clarity Medical was indeed an exception.
The hourly follow-up with exported data from the Clarity Medical RetCAM II allowed us to immediately explore technical possibilities for reading in the patient profile and the associated series of images. Within 1 hour after receipt we had proof that we could read in their data into VisualStrata ™ our image collaboration system. Wow.
Technically speaking there was no rocket science here because Clarity exports the text data in a well understandable eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and JPEG images. The value of the technical validation for both parties cannot be underestimated despite the apparent technical ease because this is the first step.
Looking down at this process from a high-level (aka "balcony") we immediately wonder why possible collaborations typically do not proceed as smoothly as this one. Why do such minor accomplishments which require very little cooperation take so long? Why do they take so many meetings? What are people afraid of? Why is there so much apparent resistance or hemming and hawing? I will save this for a later discussion.
