The current setup page has the text below, which is supposed to encourge people to let the OEMR know, via Dr Bowen when an installation occurs so we can use that info for grants and such. OEMR could be an excellent source of funding for projects that are not easy to do by volunteers and for keeping documentation such as the X12 guides we bought last year…
We pursue grants to help fund the future development of OpenEMR. To apply for these grants, we need to estimate how many times this program is installed and how many practices are evaluating or using this software. It would be awesome if you would email us at drbowen@openmedsoftware.org if you have installed this software. The more details about your plans with this software, the better, but even just sending us an email stating you just installed it is very helpful.
So I was thinking that it would be easy, and would hurt to add the OEMR donation button to the final setup page, with maybe a defaulted donation amount of $10. It would not be anything that anyone had to do, but might make it easy to encourage a donation and also help track first installs. We could also add it to copyright page for people that are inspired after using it while…
The suggestion to “email Dr. Bowen” may be more work than folks are willing to do. It means leaving the workflow of the installation process to let us know about the install.
Would it be reasonable to set something up on the OEMR servers to collect an email address and comments that the installer can input that would send info directly? It would still be entirely optional.
For donation link, like the plan of placing it in copyright page (Make a second section after Licensing called Donations) and on that last install step (note this will not be seen by most installations since xampp package is most popular and does not use setup.php)
The idea of registering/tracking the software has been brought up many times, but there’s never been anything developed for this on either oemr.org or open-emr.org site. Could place code for this also in the setup.php file and copyright page whenever somebody makes a server tool on oemr.org/open-emr.org to listen/capture this.
The code for both the server side capture and the modifications to setup.php in an intrusive manner are trivial. I can implement the setup.php changes and would be happy develop the server side functionality if I knew that this functionality would make it onto a server somewhere. I don’t care if the registration information goes to oemr.org or to open-emr.org, (or maybe even have the info get submitted to both…) so long as I knew it was being captured somewhere.
Ideally it would capture the information along with a captcha verification (or else will get bombarded with hundreds of spam), which would then simply be emailed from the server to all interested parties (either for each item or in some sort of report form at certain intervals), thus the physical place of the server is inconsequential. Additionally, which server it goes on isn’t important as long as the domain name that directs it there is constant. It can’t physically go on sourceforge’s project web (ie. where open-emr.org website is), because sourceforge doesn’t allow high use of their project web email server. I am predicting there will be “issues” that arise between what domain name is used, but we can discuss this in the conference calls (ie. I would not waste to much of your time on the programming component until that issue is dealt with).
While this would be a very good thing to have, it’s my opinion that we would likely still continue to hear the sound of crickets over the userbase. Note I am likely biased (ie. overly pessimistic) at this time since there is only a year left to get MU and there has been rather minimal interest of this at this time; and this registration project won’t likely get us any closer. Of course, I am in no position to tell anybody how to spend their resources, but I humbly request looking through the Certification page to see what other options are out there http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/OpenEMR_Certification_Stage_II_Meaningful_Use
We’ve got a “chicken vs egg” problem here… I’m not willing to devote much time working on MU 2 stuff unless there is a user base willing to support the effort or some other funding source.
There is probably a decent way to include a token of some kind in the reporting process to make it difficult enough for robots to not bother. A key requirement though is that if a user is installing on a disconnected server there shouldn’t be any kind of 404/Not Found errors that would make the user think their OpenEMR install had issues.
Another decent place for a donate button and/or “phone home” would be at the end of the patch script, since people who reach that point in the process are more likely to be actual users than someone just “taking it for a spin.”
Brady, it sounds like you wouldn’t have any objections to hosting the “info gathering” services on oemr.org, since open-emr.org doesn’t seem like it’s suitable. Is that correct?
I wouldn’t consider figuring out the server side solution a waste of time even if we can’t work out an agreement for hosting/inclusion in the OpenEMR master code as I have thought about instrumenting my ePrescribe script and other future modules in this manner as well.
I think it would work better for OEMR.org to promote memberships rather than looking directly for donations or registrations. Users will be reluctant to just send their contact information to what might be perceived as a spamming database, and frankly as a project administrator I would have concerns about that also.
However many users (not all) will have an interest in coming forward to be a part of the community and influencing future direction - and those users are ones more likely to donate and otherwise support the effort.
We could just not even ask for a email address, then. This will avoid potential for abuse, especially considering these are passed through the internet in an unencrypted fashion. It could just be a “simple”, I just installed the software here etc(and a toggle that gives us permission to make the entry public, perhaps). I guess I am more ok than Rod with the donation links since it is the only way for users that have no specific needs to donate to the project (for example, the $500 donation above) and it does appear that OEMR is spending this money wisely and towards the greater good (on that end, there would be much more confidence in this regard if their were a page on the OEMR organization that listed the what and how much has been paid for over the last year(s); billing manuals, fee sheet improvements etc.)
To avoid the 404 no page error, could just try to send the information (and if get no connect, then just produce a message that the server is down and to try again from the copyright/acknowledgment page or something of that nature).
Regarding the domain link to the “server”, my thoughts are just using a sub-domain based on open-emr.org (like info.open-emr.org), which we can then we can direct to any IP address (or forward to another domain) where that “server” lives; this gives us a very easy method to change to new servers during prolonged outages etc.
To clarify: I don’t mind a donation button. I do think that soliciting memberships will be more rewarding. I’m not in favor of “registrations” that go to “interested parties.”
Would you be favorable to something I discuss in above post that does not even ask for email addresses. This could be a first step in assessing the actual number of real installations in practical use in a more formal way?
Regarding memberships, I completely agree, but there needs to be a clear membership schema and a structured online way by OEMR to collect/organize their memberships before I’d be comfortable including it in the openemr official codebase.
Hi Brady, yes I agree that something to count installations would be a good idea. Grants should be able to make good use of such numbers. You’d want to be very clear to the user about what information is transmitted, make sure they do not have a reason to object.
Membership management for OEMR is a completely different discussion. I just want to make it easier to nudge people toward thinking about contributing a little toward the project effort. Make it easy. The side effect could be a better idea of installs, but not necessarily.
Most FOSS projects have some kind of optional “would you like to register” dialog box during installation. I am in favor of that also. The results of that could be hosted on the oemr server or (if possible) on the open-emr server, matters not to me at all.
Many FOSS projects also have an optional, de-identified use and/or error reporting tool….
I think the donation banner on the setup.php, copyright/acknowledgement, sql upgrade script and sql patch scripts are a good idea (and it seems there is agreement here). So please feel free to integrate that into the code and submit it for a review. (no use holding that up why go through the pros/cons of including registration/membership/usage statistics stuff)
