I’ve been an applications programmer since 1983 (COBOL/COBOL2, CICS, DB2, C, C++, BAL, etc) and one hour into trying to install OpenEMR I’m stumped.
1. I put together a fresh machine with Windows Server 2003 R2 X64 and a RAID 10 array
2. I download and unpacked the XAMPP version of OpenEMR.
That’s about as far as I’ve gotten.
The small INSTALL file says to simply drag and drop the xammp folder into the root directory. Ok.
I’m a little shocked at this point… No registry entries? Nothing copied to the system folder? No actual install?
It then tells me to run the XAMPP Control Panel and fire up Apache and MySQL. Ok.
The 2 services show as running, and I’m thinking if I now have my basic environment up and running, that this is the easiest thing in the world to do.
Then I went looking for OpenEMR, thinking I ought to locally be able to kick off it’s main user screen, or admin screen, or something. I see no high-level OpenEMR folder. Does the “XAMPP OpenEMR” download not include OpenEMR? A search shows there are 1000’s of OpenEMR files included in the download, but in a htdocs/ folder. It doesn;t make sense that all of OpenEMR would be parked in a docs folder? So the XAMPP OpenEMR download doesn’t contain OpenEMR, but does contain the OpenEMR docs? I’m lost…
The user manual starts at a point as if you’ve already installed OpenEMR. I went looking for an Installation Guide but had no luck. I hate to admit it, but this IT professional of 30 years has no idea how to install OpenEMR. Any advice? Thank you.
Thank you, Brady.
I guess it WAS the easiest thing in the world to install.
I tried the local URL that you named (and linked to) and poof! OpenEMR popped right up.
I input “//server/openemr” on a remote machine and again, it came right up.
On to phase two!
We’re planning on initially using OpenEMR just for document management, then once we’re a little familiar with it, migrate over scheduling, accounting, etc. So I’ve 700,000+ files to somehow integrate into OpenEMR. We’ll be maintaining patient demographics on the old system (Medisoft 17) for a while yet. So, at this early stage, I’m guessing I’ll just have a VB script copy Patient ID (Chart Number) and Patient Name only, from the patient table in our Advantage database into the patient table in OpenEMR. Once I have this basic patient list into OpenEMR, I’m hoping a script can simply “file” the huge amount of .pdf and .doc (along with a few .xls and .tiff) files into the “records area” of each patient in OpenEMR. Whether OpenEMR just creates some (flexible?) folder structure that I’ll move files to, or whether things are indexed and I’ll also be doing tables inserts, I don’t know. I’m off now to look for the best info on how OpenEMR stores external documents, how they are initially loaded, accessed, etc.
I don’t want to occupy too much of your time. I’m studying the wiki now, l see CouchDB, which appears to be an optional alternative to some other default document storage system. Maybe I’ll harass someone further when I have a more specific question.