Student project on OpenEMR - requesting assistance

jkwilson2 wrote on Sunday, October 09, 2016:

Good morning,

My name is Jennifer Wilson and I am a graduate student at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. My team is investigating OpenEMR for our Advanced Systems Analysis course, and I wanted to know if you would have time to answer a few questions for us by email. We want to take as little of your time as possible, but we would appreciate your assistance. If you would be interested, please let me know. I have included the short questionnaire below, but please feel free to provide any other feedback.

Thank you for your time,

Jennifer Wilson, jkwilson2@mail.usf.edu


Questionnaire:
Interview questions for OpenEMR, general

  1. What size of organization is ideal to use OpenEMR? Is the goal to build a product that larger organizations can use?
  2. How do you evaluate a successful OpenEMR implementation?
  3. Where do the developers come from that are supporting the product? Are they users, consultants, or just interested parties?
  4. What is the patient response to the patient portal?
  5. We see that you have an Android App planned for the future as well as Stage II Certification. What other improvements do you hope to see coming?
  6. Other than the App, is there any plan to move the system into the cloud?

Interview questions for consulting firm that support and implement OpenEMR

  1. What are common features that you consult on?
  2. What are typical requests for support that you receive from customers?
  3. What has the overall reaction to OpenEMR been from users? Are they requesting it from your company, or are you teaching them about it?
  4. What major requests have you received that has impacted modules or features within OpenEMR?
  5. What improvements would you like to see in the future? How would that impact your firm?
  6. Would this software work for other industries (with appropriate changes made) or is this only useful in the medical field?

Interview questions for companies using OpenEMR

  1. What is your favorite feature within OpenEMR? What is your least favorite feature? Does this vary by user (admin, physician, receptionist, and patient?)
  2. Do you find the user interface friendly, or does it require a lot of user training needed?
  3. What features do you hope to see in the future?
  4. Do you use in-house developers or do you utilize a consulting firm for any changes?
  5. Would your office use a “smart office” where the system is in the cloud and your office uses WiFi-connected devices?

visolveemr wrote on Tuesday, October 11, 2016:

Hi Jennifer Wilson,

Greetings from ViSolve…!

Below is the repose for the questions posted:

  1. What size of organization is ideal to use OpenEMR? Is the goal to build a product that larger organizations can use?
    –OpenEMR is an ambulatory EMR that is scalable and customizable which makes it suitable for organizations of any size from small physician practices to large hospitals with outpatient centres. It can also be customized for Specialty Departments at large academic medical centres/teaching hospitals.

  2. How do you evaluate a successful OpenEMR implementation?
    –During the installation process, the application itself will notify error messages. Once done, the functionalities within the application can be loaded and tested to check whether the implementation is successful or not.

  3. Where do the developers come from that are supporting the product? Are they users, consultants, or just interested parties?
    –Developers who come forward to support the product include System Integrators, Healthcare IT vendors who are professional support providers for OpenEMR, Physicians, developers who love Open Source Technologies, those to like to contribute to Healthcare through open source communities etc. Some of them are users and interested parties as well.

  4. What is the patient response to the patient portal?

  5. We see that you have an Android App planned for the future as well as Stage II Certification. What other improvements do you hope to see coming?
    –Upcoming improvments and enhancements are discussed in SourceForge. We would recommend to follow the threads to get updated on the latest features.

  6. Other than the App, is there any plan to move the system into the cloud?
    –The application is web based and can be hosted anywhere including secure and HIPAA compliant Cloud.

Interview questions for consulting firm that support and implement OpenEMR

  1. What are common features that you consult on?
    –Feature enhancements & Customizations related to scheduling, forms, billing, lab integrations, prescription management, patient dashboards, reports etc
    –Consulting is provided based on customer/user requirements.

  2. What are typical requests for support that you receive from customers?
    • Bug Fixes
    • 7x24 Support
    • High Availablity & Disaster Recovery
    • OpenEMR Installation
    • OpenEMR User Training
    • OpenEMR Enhancements & Customization

  3. What has the overall reaction to OpenEMR been from users? Are they requesting it from your company, or are you teaching them about it?
    –OpenEMR is Open Source which makes it easier to customize exactly based on customer/user needs. So generally users who prefer a tailor made solution to best fit their workflow or business needs are the ones who may be very happy with OpenEMR.
    –It is also affordable compared to several expensive commercial products in the market.
    –Majority of OpenEMR requests have come from potential users/customers. However we also contribute to OpenEMR community on a regular basis and publish online, several educational materials on the benefits and features of OpenEMR.

  4. What major requests have you received that has impacted modules or features within OpenEMR?
    • Specialty Customizations (neurology, physiotherapy, eye clinics, etc)
    • Billing/Practice Management, Integrating with Clearing Houses
    • Lab Integrations
    • Cash flow management with reports
    And more…

  5. What improvements would you like to see in the future? How would that impact your firm?
    –We look forward to see improvements in OpenEMR performance, functionality and User Interface and other features based on user feedback and interest.

  6. Would this software work for other industries (with appropriate changes made) or is this only useful in the medical field?
    –OpenEMR is an Electronic Medical Record which suits the Healthcare Industry. However, the Scheduling/Registration Module, Patient Portal Module can be customized to fit other industries but we are not sure at this point.

Hope this answers your questions.!

Thanks,
ViSolve OpenEMR Support Team
ViSolve

harleytuck wrote on Wednesday, October 12, 2016:

Hello Ms Wilson-

I am not an OpenEMR developer but I work with one of the professional vendors that support OpenEMR for our customers who use it. One feature of OpenEMR which ViSolve touched lightly on above, but is critical to understanding the OpenEMR project, is that it is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). That one fact complicates the answers to several of the questions you’ve asked.

Just one example is that OpenEMR is customizable by anybody who can code with the languages it is written in. Additionally, it has modules with which users who are not IT pros can create their own data entry forms. And people who have even elementary database expertise can generate custom reports. Because it is so customizable it is routinely tailored to a wide variety of user requirements, both by talented programmer/ physicians (such as Brady Miller, MD, the OpenEMR project coordinator) and by the professional support companies.

For example, my company, MI-Squared, has deployments in sites ranging from single Physician offices to multi-site multispecialty medical groups. ViSolve is one of the largest organizational contributors to the OpenEMR project and they have their own target customer base that includes needs different than ours’. That variety of customers makes for a wide array of possible answers to some of your questions.

All that being said let me kick in a few comments from a different perspective.

  • General OpenEMR:
  1. No ideal organization size. However, an ambulatory physician’s office that provides medical care and a few basic services such as simple electronic billing and DME inventory will require the fewest adjustments to OpenEMR Community Edition (the free download version).
  2. Signs of a successful implementation: with so many different potential use cases the only metric I would apply for a successful implementation is, ‘does the customer say it does what they want, whatever that is?’
  3. Developers come from everywhere; the ones who are successful in this project are those who can embrace the unique FOSS development model. And as I say, ‘plain folks’ also contribute their modifications so not all project development is done by coders.
  4. Patient Portal: as customer support I don’t hear from the patients themselves but the staff in the offices that use the portal say it is crucial in their communication with their patients.
  5. Not involved in this aspect
  6. As ViSolve indicates, OpenEMR can be hosted ‘in the cloud’, i.e., accessible via the Internet. However, if you’re referring to the class of ‘cloud- based EMRs’ such as Practice Fusion, the OpenEMR project strictly offers the product, not the business application. Some vendor would have to customize OpenEMR to fit that business model.
  • Supporting/ Implementing OpenEMR
  1. The features that we at MI-Squared have consulted on are e-prescription, custom forms for different specialty practices, electronic billing, UI modification, hosting requirements.
  2. Support requests: installation and training are part of our initial setup contract; troubleshooting user errors and re-configuring system setups are frequent requests until the users learn their system. Ongoing support is typically data entry form customizations, feature enancements, additional service subscriptions (e.g., e-Rx).
  3. Overall reaction from users: keep in mind that the vast majority of OpenEMR users are DIT-ers (Do- It- Themselvers) and you can read their reactions to OpenEMR directly on this forum. The reactions we vendors hear from our customers are filtered by the add-on services we provide which again, makes for a wide range of answers. Mostly, our customers have done their own research and are very happy with OpenEMR’s cost:features ratio.
  4. Feature requests: This is a complex question because of the Open Source nature of this project. The OpenEMR project itself doesn’t simply implement users’ feature requests and add them to the codebase. If the requestor can code the feature and contribute it, it may be added to OpenEMR. On the other hand, I believe that most features committed to OpenEMR by profesional support vendors were developed in response to their customers’ requests. ViSolve’s list above describes the sorts of features requested of most all vendors that provide that service for their customers. Specific contributions differ in how the features accommodate particular workflows.
  5. Future improvements - I’ve heard requests from our customers re: UI design, specialty practice customizations and billing module enhancements.
  6. OpenEMR for other industries - again, I am not a developer but I do have a degree in Health Informatics so I’m not ignorant of what’s involved in a conversion like that. In my opinion it would be much more efficient to build a new program from the ground up than to modify OpenEMR for a non- healthcare application. OpenEMR is extensively optimized to healthcare workflows and its modules are tightly integrated with each other. Using it in any other health-related field is totally feasible- OpenEMR has Veterinary variants, Dental office variants, Alternative Medicine uses. However, the individual component modules in OpenEMR such as the scheduler, the calendar, the inventory, etc, etc are already available as standalone FOSS projects which would require much less work to adapt to a different environment than modifying OpenEMR.

Pardon my verbosity; thanks for your time. Regards- Harley

jkwilson2 wrote on Wednesday, October 12, 2016:

Thank you very much for your reply, this information is incredibly helpful in our group research. I appreciate your time!
Jennifer

jkwilson2 wrote on Wednesday, October 12, 2016:

Hi Harley - thank you so much for your comments. I appreciate your time in responding to my request, and this information is invaluable for our team’s research.
Jennifer