I installed OpenEMR recently in my office on an older computer running Windows XP… (I’ve stuck with older computers as I’m still using an old DOS version of Medical Manager for billing). One problem is that there is often a lag of a few seconds when I enter old information into the Clinical Reminders section. I’m wondering if this is common in OpenEMR or if it is because the older computers might be too slow. Are others who installed on newer computers seeing this lag? I would put in a newer computer if the increased speed would save me time during the work day, but don’t want to bother if there isn’t likely to be a noticeable improvement. (Plus even if I installed OpenEMR on a faster computer, I also wonder if limitations on network speed would limit any better performance).
Doesn’t really seem to only be a matter of computer speed(but this is definitely helpful). For example, when I use the XAMPP-OpenEMR package on windows 7 (with a quad 8GB laptop), it is noticeably slower than when I run the OpenEMR Appliance(which uses ubuntu) on the same computer. One crazy difference is the installation of the rxnorm tables, which takes more than an hour on the xampp-openemr package, but only 5 minutes on the Appliance (again, both are running on the same computer).
One potential way out of your dilemma is to try the Appliance on your windows xp (then you can still run the billing software and OpenEMR off the same computer).
As an aside, your local network will not affect the processing performance at all. Also, what do you mean by entering information in Clinical Reminders section (ideally, there should not be any lags on the order of seconds)?
Since PHP first came to Windows back on the 20th of October 2000 with the release of PHP 3.0.17, the Windows binaries have always been released as thread safe packages. The reason for this is that Windows uses a multi threaded architecture as opposed to the multi proccess architecture of Linux and Unix. The problem this has when using PHP on IIS in CGI mode is that it makes it very slow as CGI was built on a multi process model, not a multi threaded model. On the flip side the problem this has when using PHP on IIS with the much faster ISAPI module is that there are several popular PHP extensions that have been developed with only Unix/Linux in mind (multi proccess model), and actually cause the PHP ISAPI module to crash on IIS. This making CGI the most stable environment for PHP on IIS, with the major disadvantage that it is terribly slow due to it having to load and unload the entire PHP environment from memory everytime there is a request.
I’m referring to the Clinical Reminders on the right side of the screen. As I just started using OpenEMR, the program things everyone is behind on preventative studies and required diabetic tests. I’m entering the old data on these items on every patient, and there is a lag after I add each item
Memory, number of cores would also increase if I go to a newer computer, although from above it is not clear whether it would help with speed or not.
By trying the appliance do you mean this Virtual Appliance: http://www.bradymd.com/appliance/
I found the web site but haven’t had much time to look at it yet but it might be worth installing if it would be faster