>>Your point reminds me of the eternal debate between 'radical' and 'gradual' innovation. Generally in France we tend to consider that an Innovation ought to be a Revolution to deserve being called so. I tend to believe that many small improvements can also be called and respected as 'innovation'.
>>A Web app. bring at least these benefits compared to a desktop app.:
- no installation at all
- accessible anywhere, with any device
- UI betters suits the display - more intuitive, less training involved
- user can't break anything

I understand all these things and for clarity, I was involved with one of the first Web EHR products in the world in 1997. So you are preaching to the converted. ;-)

However, it seems to me that you are arguing that you have a better sort of scalpel to perform a laparotomy. Eighteen years later I'm saying that we need to look past the scalpel and ask whether we still need perform so many laparotomies, rather than offering an IT equivalent of laparoscopy, or keyhole surgery, to completely transform the way businesses provide their services.

Or put another way: we need to stop arguing about what sort of buggy whip is best when we ought to be considering how we can add value to the Model Ts rolling off Henry Ford's production line. This is no joke: the likes of Google, Mercedez Benz and even Microsoft are bypassing the wider development community to black box innovative software code that will be sold as an exchangeable commodity. E.g. within 5 years Google says cars will drive themselves and there will be zero, nada opportunity for the wider development community to make $ from that or even to participate. Not even a consideration and it's not just cars it's happening to: all over industry, people are bypassing an irrelevant development community to commoditize things we like to think are special and worthy of big fees.