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.
- 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).
- 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?’
- 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.
- 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.
- Not involved in this aspect
- 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
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
- 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.
- Future improvements - I’ve heard requests from our customers re: UI design, specialty practice customizations and billing module enhancements.
- 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