Were at an interesting juncture in technology where the burgeoning capabilities of open source source architecture has come unto its own and offers some significant capabilities for the future. As Microsoft has stumbled, large scale users have taken steps into the Linux realm where PHP and MySQL offer all of the power, with more flexibility, at a fraction of the licensing fees. In addition Linux plays well with X-Window and innovative graphical environments such as Beryl provide untapped new graphical capabilities heretofore only toyed with in Microsoft Vista. With its inherent high performance graphics capabilities, this graphical environment is poised to provide what we would imagine the next generation of graphical user environments to look like.
With many EMR systems based upon Oracle with varying decors of user environments, the model has pretty much evolved to a slim, thin, or fat client tied to the database mothership with fields cast in stone that are difficult to recast without total rebuilds. This is where the PHP front-end shines where skins can be changed at the click of a mouse and a system is as agile as your Cold Fusion skills. As for the notion of support, you can either have a system remotely hosted or, for much less than the price of a yearly maintenance contract hire your own single FTE software engineer to care and feed your licensed source code.
I have seen such a system recently and it leaves you shaking your head as you ponder the possibilities. Imagine a system where you could discuss risk factors with your patient such as smoking and the system could deliver how much the anticipated healthcare costs would be. A system where you could download your patients information to a thumb drive so that the data would be portable, making it accessible to any care facility that the patient might travel to. Click a button to change the look of the interface with a new skin. Visualize data in multiple formats that are completely customizable by the user. With a web format created in Adobe Cold Fusion where you could customize the system to meet your specific needs - all without weeks or months of expensive build time.
The system architecture has been designed by NetOrange™ and their framework is called cOS™ (Clinical Operating System). Its a true web based Linux application running on a MySQL database. Very supportable, and easy to implement either local or remotely hosted. They have several implementations available from PACS to clinical research to physicians office and hospital EMR. This will be the technology to watch as the bigger Oracle based systems start to sunset.
As for the question of support, I would only say, compare what your spending today to what it would cost to have your own Cold Fusion person on-site. Most facilities pay many FTEs salary to the big boys for support. I think the future model will be a much leaner shop but with more reliance on a local team for support. This would be the definition of obsolescence proofing.
I have seen such a system recently and it leaves you shaking your head as you ponder the possibilities. Imagine a system where you could discuss risk factors with your patient such as smoking and the system could deliver how much the anticipated healthcare costs would be. A system where you could download your patients information to a thumb drive so that the data would be portable, making it accessible to any care facility that the patient might travel to. Click a button to change the look of the interface with a new skin. Visualize data in multiple formats that are completely customizable by the user. With a web format created in Adobe Cold Fusion where you could customize the system to meet your specific needs - all without weeks or months of expensive build time.
The system architecture has been designed by NetOrange™ and their framework is called cOS™ (Clinical Operating System). Its a true web based Linux application running on a MySQL database. Very supportable, and easy to implement either local or remotely hosted. They have several implementations available from PACS to clinical research to physicians office and hospital EMR. This will be the technology to watch as the bigger Oracle based systems start to sunset.
As for the question of support, I would only say, compare what your spending today to what it would cost to have your own Cold Fusion person on-site. Most facilities pay many FTEs salary to the big boys for support. I think the future model will be a much leaner shop but with more reliance on a local team for support. This would be the definition of obsolescence proofing.
No comments:
Post a Comment