The users of the sub-par app are captive, the hospital or insurance company is mandating it, and neither the doctor nor patients are free to choose a competing app.
If you create a technically better app for the users, people still won't be able to use it unless you also are chosen by those higher up, and since there's likely already a strong existing relationship between the executives at the existing company and at the medical compan(ies), that means creating a competitor also will require building a lot of social capital with the decision makers, taking them to dinner and on golf trips, and so on.
It will take years of your life, millions of dollars (since a 1-man company will never be seen as legitimate enough to provide a medical app, you'll need a large company with many employees), and the chance of success is minimal.
I don't see how this is an "appropriate" response to a bad app.
I was just thinking of a better front end for the same API that trifticon mentionned. Still a lot of work of course, but may not require as many approvals.
I wish we lived in a world where all these APIs were open, regulated, and everybody could compete on the implementation on both sides... One day, if capitalism survive technofeudalism...
If you create a technically better app for the users, people still won't be able to use it unless you also are chosen by those higher up, and since there's likely already a strong existing relationship between the executives at the existing company and at the medical compan(ies), that means creating a competitor also will require building a lot of social capital with the decision makers, taking them to dinner and on golf trips, and so on.
It will take years of your life, millions of dollars (since a 1-man company will never be seen as legitimate enough to provide a medical app, you'll need a large company with many employees), and the chance of success is minimal.
I don't see how this is an "appropriate" response to a bad app.