OpenEMR and SAAS

drbowen wrote on Tuesday, May 05, 2009:

I know of there organizations that are currently running OpenEMR in a SAAS environment (or are gearing up to offer it in the new future.  I though it might be a useful thing to allow these organizations to advertise on the oemr.org site.

Does anybody have any objections to this?

Sam Bowen, MD
Open Source Medical Software

drbowen wrote on Tuesday, May 05, 2009:

Ooops…  3 organizations.

SB

drbowen wrote on Tuesday, May 05, 2009:

Currently we have 225 unique visitors to our site on a daily basis.  Our downloads have jumped 20 percent in the last month to a record high 1,886 downloads in April.

We have increasing interest from large organizations taking an interest in "helping us".  This appears to be due to the HITECH portion of the Economic Recovery and Stimulus Act of 2009.

bradymiller wrote on Tuesday, May 05, 2009:

hey,
What would be the specifics of the advertising, and would it produce significant proceeds towards openemr (plus what exactly is saas in practical terms)?
-brady

bradymiller wrote on Tuesday, May 05, 2009:

disregard my what is a saas questions; a simple google search solved that one
-brady

blankev wrote on Tuesday, May 05, 2009:

Sam B.

why not give a short insight and/or lots of information to show that SAAS might be the thing of the future for OpenEMR?

Pimm

aperezcrespo wrote on Tuesday, May 05, 2009:

hi
    I agree with beady. What are the benefits for the project itself. Advertising, support, code, CHITT? Off hand I don’t see how advertising the project would benefit them. We are basically “Free”.
What do we need more of?

oh and isn’t this the same as Hosting?

Thanks

drbowen wrote on Tuesday, May 05, 2009:

The organizations who provide support for OpenEMR do this in a variety of ways.

The smaller companies go to a medical office configure a server, maintain software and provides for backups.

Some of the companies provide support remotely over the Internet usually by login remotely over a secure connection.

Some of the companies provide hosting services for a single office or two.  As the organization grows it provides this service to multiple clinics where the data instances are only visible to one particular client.  The instances are kept separate and they have used a variety mechanisms to do this.

I have been in contact with a couple of vendors who have solved this on a much larger scale by installing OpenEMR on a large distributed host network such as “Go-Daddy”.

These latter two types of operations could be referred to as Software as a Service (SAAS) though in common use SAAS really refers to the last situation.

There is nothing wrong with this type of vendor organization from advertising to attract new clients.  Typically these are small offices that do not have and cannot afford a separate IT department or person.  It is easier for these small offices to rent the facilities of the vendor organization by a “per month” fee.

The visitors coming to OpenEMR have a large percentage of  organizations that look at using OpenEMR but just don’t have the technical expertise to install and operate any electronic medical record.  They are mostly looking for a cheap solution and would prefer to just to let someone else handle the headaches of doing this correctly.

In addition to this, it is becoming clear that the complexity of the governmental requirements concerning “Meaningful Use” is very likely going to include  secure email, secure messaging, E-Prescribing and document handling.  These problems are best handled by vendor organizations that can provide these services for their client physicians.   The “good intent” of these law makers is making the situation for physicians so complex that only professional IT companies will be able to deliver the solution.

As this market grows the next pressure OpenEMR is going to face is how scalable this software is.  We will need to start working on streamlining the system to meet maximum loads under pressure.  Tony McCormick’s group is running some scalability tests at this time.  PHP can handle a lot of heat.  “Facebook.com” and “Yahoo.com” run on PHP.

There is a growing number of professional IT companies that want a piece of the action.  They will need physician clients.  Our organizations that support us already need more clients.  I think we can help “hook up” an important market with these vendors.  We can use the funds generated to help support our tax-exempt organization and help support the development of OpenEMR.

Sam Bowen, MD
Open Source Medical Software

bradymiller wrote on Tuesday, May 05, 2009:

hey,

beady? lol, that’s what my young nephew calls me.

The key thing is that the user is never confused whether this software is free or not; the free concept needs to be obvious.  The users you describe looking for the cheapest alternative likely don’t even know what open source means, and will likely blown away when they see that OpenEMR is free.  It’s vital the ads don’t give any impression that OpenEMR costs money, thus taking away from one of its major selling points.

Also, as I’m writing this, I also am realizing that companies offering OpenEMR as a service will give OpenEMR added credibility to users shopping for an emr.  This is another concept that we need to make obvious on our web pages; that there are companies and practices that are using OpenEMR successfully.

-brady