I’m a journalist working on an article for the Journal of AHIMA about open-source software in healthcare. Our audience is health information (HI) professionals, so this article will explore what HI professionals need to know about open-source software, questions they should ask when considering it, how to plan/prepare for implementation and assist in tool selection/launch, etc.
Might there be someone here who could weigh in on that? Happy to coordinate a call or email interview (ideally by January 10th).
Harley Tuck here, I do customer support for MI-Squared, one of the longer-lived OpenEMR vendors, and I post here regularly answering newbies’ questions. I have a BS in Health Informatics (OR Inst Tech, '14) and have been doing this work since I got out of school. Other members of this forum have qualifications that vary widely so you’ll want to know who you’re talking to and get as many different points of view as possible. But if you can get multiple respondents this really is the best place to get them.
Somewhat tongue in cheek, I offer this link as an initial reply to your enquiry:
It’s ‘tongue in cheek’ because it demonstrates a major aspect of FOSS. In resources like this forum a seeker needs to be ready to primarily do their own work: just showing up and asking a question rarely gets more than a few answers. But if you understand that over the years most of the common questions that can be asked about OpenEMR HAVE been asked, and the answers are stored here for the searching, a well- considered search can yield lots of information.
Just a quick summary of my take on what HI Pros need to know about FOSS-- you are talking about FOSS, not simply Open Source, right?
Among other things FOSS software really is a development philosophy so they should understand the basic tenets before signing up for it. It can prevent some misunderstandings as the project evolves
Most FOSS projects have scanty and/ or horrible user documentation. They should find a project with good documentation, responsive forums and/ or vendors who give training sessions included in the fees.
Most projects are heavily oriented toward the developers so the customer should have their own IT pro to translate between the devs and the medical and business users. Because most devs really do NOT speak User, much less Healthcare Pro.
FOSS applications will typically require some customization to suit a specific practice. It will save time (i.e., $$$) if the customer has a clear idea of what they want out of their application.
I probably have missed a couple things but that’s a start. Sure, I’d love to opine more; DM me and we can discuss it.
Hi @medjourno, if there’s an active and welcoming community that supports the software then that’s a good indication that it’s worthwhile.
Hoping that HI professionals will check out OpenEMR. It’s a supportive and engaged group that can be found on the forum, our virtual calls and our codebase repository.
DM coming shortly!