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OpenEMR: Open-source medical record software

open-emr.org

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Re: OpenEMR: Open-source medical record software

#11
Related:

Open EMR - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25141287 - Nov 2020 (127 comments)

OpenEMR v5.0.1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16949974 - April 2018 (37 comments)

OpenEMR is Accepting Donations on OpenCollective - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15951191 - Dec 2017 (43 comments)

OpenEMR: Electronic Medical Records and Medical Practice Management Software - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13888893 - March 2017 (203 comments)

Ask HN: Anyone interested in working on an OpenEMR modernization project (OSS)? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13807371 - March 2017 (4 comments)

Re: OpenEMR: Open-source medical record software

#12
post #8
post #3

I know basking projects based on their choice of language is controversial, but PHP really is pushing it for me. And for medical data, too. PHP isn't boring technology - Java is boring technology - PHP is downright dangerous.

Php is strictly for websites, according to any sources but PHP devs. Medical records is not a website.

What does this mean? I've been working in this space for years. All the hospitals want web apps. Some want to deploy them internally.

Re: OpenEMR: Open-source medical record software

#13
post #6

Ok. However. If I'm running a hospital, I want my record software to be developed and maintained by a company that can pay its developers. The place for openness, vendor neutrality and transparency are protocols and file formats, which define how different software communicate.

I haven't seen a single friend who works in a medical profession recommend or feel well supported or feel like their system was well rolled out.

I would 100% rather go to a place using open source software, with enthusiasts hope & open improvement iterating forward & leaving the door open to others to improve & build community around.

It's a shame that we leave the work of important things locked to a couple far off product development organizations, that changes are gated in so few. When so many feel & experience the end result, are left at ends to cope with whatever has been given.

Re: OpenEMR: Open-source medical record software

#14

OpenEMR seems like it could have a market opportunity, in principle. The EMR market in the US is dominated by two big, unpopular systems (Cerner and Epic). A smaller, nimbler competitor could make inroads among health systems that don't like that duopoly. Does anyone have any stories about setting up / using OpenEMR?

There are already many smaller competitors such as Paradigm, eClinicalWorks, Intellicure, gGastro, Athena, Practice Fusion, PrimeSUITE, eMD Central, NextGen etc.

Those are just the ones I've had to work with in the past but I'm sure there's many more.

Re: OpenEMR: Open-source medical record software

#15
post #3

I know basking projects based on their choice of language is controversial, but PHP really is pushing it for me. And for medical data, too. PHP isn't boring technology - Java is boring technology - PHP is downright dangerous.

> PHP is downright dangerous.

No... you can write secure code in PHP perfectly well. However, a lot of code written in PHP is insecure, and the reason for that is simple - PHP has relatively low barrier of entry, which means a lot of people that know little about security write in PHP.

Re: OpenEMR: Open-source medical record software

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone (biased) who works with one of those two, I have a hard time believing the complexity of installing an EMR can be handled by this type of project. The challenges are not the challenges of tech. They aren't sexy. It is just really boring and complex business logic and the strength of both those companies is the vast amount of support they provide during install and future maintenance. The problem is less ab…

Thanks for sharing your insights. One wonders if the business model for supporting efforts like this could be to provide the support/services, while keeping the code base open source?

I think that would be a good idea and the only way it would work.

Unless this is way, way, way more polished you won't see a Mayo Clinic or Cedars-Sinai using something like this. They tried that 20 years ago and it was scrapped for Epic.

If it targeted smaller rural access hospitals or smaller practices and sold consulting and hosting services it might work if it way undercut the current bigger players... But this market is already way more crowded than the massive enterprise systems like Cerner-Oracle and Epic.

Re: OpenEMR: Open-source medical record software

#17
post #6

Ok. However. If I'm running a hospital, I want my record software to be developed and maintained by a company that can pay its developers. The place for openness, vendor neutrality and transparency are protocols and file formats, which define how different software communicate.

I haven't seen a single friend who works in a medical profession recommend or feel well supported or feel like their system was well rolled out. I would 100% rather go to a place using open source software, with enthusiasts hope & open improvement iterating forward & leaving the door open to others to improve & build community around. It's a shame that we leave the work of important things locked to a couple far off…

I'm super biased admittedly as I have worked on the implementation side for these big systems but...

Try to ask those same friends to agree on the "correct" workflow for some aspect of their clinical work. You won't find agreement in the same state, in the same hospital system, in the same hospital, or even in the same department.

I can't claim what is out there is great, but it's like that quote about democracy. It is a terrible system but the best available.

Making something like this open source could work, but whenever this comes up on HN it seems like people think making it open source magically makes it better. It's not technically complex, just organizationally complex to find agreement - and I think open source would make that aspect harder.

Re: OpenEMR: Open-source medical record software

#18

OpenEMR seems like it could have a market opportunity, in principle. The EMR market in the US is dominated by two big, unpopular systems (Cerner and Epic). A smaller, nimbler competitor could make inroads among health systems that don't like that duopoly. Does anyone have any stories about setting up / using OpenEMR?

As someone (biased) who works with one of those two, I have a hard time believing the complexity of installing an EMR can be handled by this type of project. The challenges are not the challenges of tech. They aren't sexy. It is just really boring and complex business logic and the strength of both those companies is the vast amount of support they provide during install and future maintenance. The problem is less ab…

It's the same old thing with any vertical market software. Do you modify your business processes to suit an existing piece of software or customize the software to suit your existing business processes? Every healthcare provider organization likes to believe that they're a special snowflake with unique requirements. That's almost never true, but it's tough to convince the decision makers and veto holders otherwise.

I am making a general comment about industry dynamics here. Not recommending OpenEMR.

Re: OpenEMR: Open-source medical record software

#19

There's a saying in hospital tech sales: if you've seen one hospital's stack, you've seen one stack. The sheer amount of bespoke deployments and lack of interoperability in these facilities would blow the average HN reader's mind. And through the inertia of these deployments and their (absolutely necessary) adherence to HIPAA and SoC, getting any kind of competitor in, much less one with the lack of support resources…

I would agree with this. The actual tech isn't all that difficult, you just need a very large and flexible database with a functional front-end, detailed process automation and business rules, hardened security, and high reliability. All very well-worn and established elements that can be found pretty readily even in the open source software space. It's the aforementioned integrations, as well as the overall implementation, that will be seriously difficult, especially with all of the unique requirements, extensive compliance, and regulatory pressures that make the kind of software development oversights that might be embarrassing in less complex projects potentially criminal here, or at the very least very damaging and expensive for the developers, their customers, and possibly even their customers' patients.

So the development of any given ePHI system is very high-risk, exceedingly tedious, difficult and time-consuming (aka, expensive), and from my own experience as an I.T. consultant, the potential customer base is going to be full of healthcare orgs who are likely already entrenched within an existing solution, one that has likely been integrated with several other operational services, and one that the lead will almost certainly be very reticent to switch from, considering the huge workload, expense, and disruption to routines that such a migration necessarily involves. That means it could take a very long time to pull in new customers, so you'll need deep cash reserves to maintain development and operational budgets while the initial sales, onboarding, and subsequent support takes place.

I have gone through such a migration process for a very small healthcare provider, and even in a small clinic with a single doctor, it was extremely involved. I am a fierce proponent of open source software and a DIY ethos, but at least in this specific genre of software, I think the larger established players are ultimately the only ones adequately prepared to pull it off properly.

Re: OpenEMR: Open-source medical record software

#20
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone (biased) who works with one of those two, I have a hard time believing the complexity of installing an EMR can be handled by this type of project. The challenges are not the challenges of tech. They aren't sexy. It is just really boring and complex business logic and the strength of both those companies is the vast amount of support they provide during install and future maintenance. The problem is less ab…

It's the same old thing with any vertical market software. Do you modify your business processes to suit an existing piece of software or customize the software to suit your existing business processes? Every healthcare provider organization likes to believe that they're a special snowflake with unique requirements. That's almost never true, but it's tough to convince the decision makers and veto holders otherwise. I…

>Every healthcare provider organization likes to believe that they're a special snowflake with unique requirements

Very, very true in my experience. But it isn't as crazy as it sounds on the surface. Very little of what hospitals do is truly evidence based. So we can say, well Duke does this or Cleveland Clinic does that, but maybe your hospital doesn't have the resources of a top 10 hospital and you can't make their protocols work. Or your patient population is different.

For me, the root problem goes back to difficulty in automating data analysis that truly "understands" outcomes. Even with full EMR data good luck assessing the outcome of a given therapy in a scientific, controlled way.

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