Electronic health record (EHR) systems
typically comprise of a Practice Management (PM) application
- (Scheduling, Patient Registration, Billing, Reporting) and
a Electronic Medical Record (EMR) application - (Clinical
Notes, Assessments/Problem lists, ePrescription, Standard/Traditional
Prescriptions, Standard/Traditional Electronic lab orders,
Standard/Traditional Electronic Lab Reporting, Document Management,
Decision Support, and Disease Management just to name a few
componets of an EMR).
A number of EHR systems are now available under OpenSource
licensing, sometimes referred to as free and OpenSource software
(FOSS).
One of the major motivators for such efforts is the fact that
proprietary health information systems, for the most part,
are very expensive and difficult to customize, hence the openSource
initiative. US based OpenSource EHRs initiatives are as follows;
These systems have begun to gain acceptance within the US
and Internatioanl Healthcare provider communities.
International / Overseas based OpenSource EHRs initiatives
are as follows; The Canadian OSCAR Project -
(OpenOSCAR)
- http://www.oscarcanada.org) and the German GNUmed Project
(http://www.gnumed.org).
The adavantages associated with deploying an OpenSource solution
are quite huge they include; (a.) lower start-up/cost of ownership
(b.) Lower maintenance costs and (c.) Greater flexibility
with respect to customization.
Technology:
JAVA, JEE technology and the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL,
PHP) are some of the common OpenSource technologies that
are used in the development of these systems. Once these systems
are customized to specifications, there are several deployment
options. These deployment options are as follows;
