Roel De Meester wrote:
Hello, i was told too ask you about a comparison of care2x against similar other open source projects. I want to implement a HIS/EMR/EPR (whatever you call it) in one nonprofit outpatient AIDS/HIV clinic. Later on, it will be implemented in several clinics in Africa and South America. Any suggestions?
I know of at least 2 different studies about open sourced HIS (as in Hospital Information System). They are both government sponsored and, as far as I know of, they are not public. One of them is european. Being co-author of one of them, I may be biased.
Simply put, in the Open Source HIS software you do not have many choices:
1. Either you choose VISTA, which is now (mostly) 30 years old. It started as US Veterans Administration's own private IT project and was recently open sourced. Several commercial operations are trying to explore it and openVISTA is the project that usually comes to mind.
Both its age, its closed software origins and its US citizenship shows when you start to do some serious work with it.
It is reliable, pretty well tested and with a strong supporter base in the US. I would call it "baseball" software, as it is mostly a US "thing" built to address the idiosyncrasies of the US health system.
If you go for VISTA be prepared to go to a different dimension and to study a world of once closed software:
- own and specific database management system,
- own and specific communications protocols,
- the M language (once called MUMPS),
- a very US specific way of dealing with the health matters.
2. Or you choose Care2x. Besides also being open, it is based in newer paradigms and programming languages. It seems to be maturing very quickly and, as we speak, a better (more reliable) version is being tested.
If you go for Care2x, I am sure that you will feel almost immediately at home. You will use familiar paradigms like your old and trusted browser, or operating system. As you dig deeper into the program you will see all those internet paradigms, protocols and languages that you keep hearing of: php, javascript, http, https, dicam, etc.
BUT... as soon as you try to dig deeper into the system you will realize that nobody knows it well, nobody documented it properly yet and the only person that could be of any real help in case of trouble needing urgent help is Elpidio Latorilla.
Trying to fully understand Care2x software structure, data flow and business code, could take you several months (years?). Also in the downside, there are too much critical functions missing, like the ledger/accounting module, the inventory module and a transactional based structure (and a better data model?).
3. There are other, more specialized and niche specific projects, like OIO, GNUMed, or SQL-Clinic projects. But they can not be classified as full Hospital Information Systems or, at least, as complete as VISTA or Care2x.
All things weighted I would prefer to support the Care2x adolescent rather than the Vista senescent.
Either way, be prepared to invest time and money and, please...
before choosing a particular package try to answer the following questions:
a) Is the software reliable and has all the functionalities that your organization currently needs?
b) If you need technical assistance installing or supporting it whom do you contact and how much will you need to pay to get it?
c) How will the people from your organization interact with the new software?
Most organizations keep forgetting that a HIS is a "living creature" made of two parts: software and real people.
The problem is that if either part is not up with the needs of the other part the whole organism usually dies. That's why more than 85% of the HIS implementations end up as (complete or partial) failures.
I hope my answer was of any help.
Best Regards,
J. Antas
P.S. - I am also forwarding your question to the openhealth and care2x email lists hoping that someone else may give you a better answer.
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