I’m putting together a research proposal for a free clinic. We’re doing research on medical records, and we’d like to take the clinic paperless. I have a couple questions for Open EMR users, to see if it will fit our needs.
1) We’d like to track data not normally tracked in a traditional EMR. How customizable are the screens? I saw a screenshot of a demographics screen. It had 5 user defined fields. Is that the maximum?
2) Can the data from Open EMR be exported to Epi Info?
3) Can the data be exported to a format that a statistical software package (like SPSS or SAS) can read?
If you just have the answer to any one of those questions, it would be extremely helpful.
Also, one more question. The clinic has two doctors. How much time would it take (in your opinion) to deploy Open EMR and have it ready to go?
#1 - Yes. You can add more user-defined fields from Administration ->Layout -> Demographics (select). Just add the user-defined fields, which will get reflected in the Patient Demographics page.
#2, We can export the OpenEMR data from the mysql DB (using Administration -> Databases ) into some excel/csv file format & import the same data to SPSS. (Since SPSS can import EXCEL file data )
Basic setup can be done in as little as two hours on a Windows machine, but that is hardly what you are really talking about. Using OpenEMR is like any other tool - think about your skills as a driver, then remember when you first got your learner’s permit.
Your users can only get real value as they learn how it works for them. If they will be doing all the admin stuff as you go along, they will best learn the system’s workings. But I’ll bet they will prefer to “farmout” most of that to you. And the specific customizations you are intending can become substantial, depending on their complexity.
Not much of a detailed answer, I know, but an honest appraisal. OpenEMR is a very powerful tool.