Mike Donnelly said: > I'm wondering about the suitability of Vista for use in a small private > radiology clinic in Ontario, Canada. The clinic, similar to many others > in the province, has legacy software in need of replacement. Currently, > they have two workstations for capturing of exam information, printing > of labels and flashcards, for data-entry of transcription text, and > Ontario billing (I.e. OHIP). The clinic is currently not "filmless" nor > does it connect to the outside world for doctor's orders, use of PACS > brokers for sharing with local hospitals, etc, but these things are > envisioned for the future ideal system. Maybe, just mabe, Vista can > serve as a good platform for this type of health office. Initial > concerns I have are as follows ...
VistA supports and has supported a wide range of hospitals. This means that the Radiology package (not imaging) is capable of keeping track of films, orders, interpretations, etc for small radiology departments as well as large ones. This should handle film support as well as interacting with imaging for filmless. I expect most of your operational needs for a radiology clinic should be handled. You could use a subset of the Demographics subsystem to enter patients, and simply ignore most of the non-radiology relevant VistA. > 1. There does not appear to be any Canadian activity around Vista. Is > anyone working to deploy Vista in the Canadian health care market? Is > anyone billing from Vista to Ontario's OHIP billing system? I expect Joseph Dal Molin would give more insight in this. > > 2. I'm not sure if Vista would even be suitable for a private Radiology > clinic (Canadian or otherwise) such as the one I describe above. Can > anyone comment on this? I believe it would do much of what you need. > 3. Use of linux desktops may not be well recieved. A Linux server may > be ok. Can Vista radiology software be run from Windows clients? Does > Vista's Delphi GUI take care of this? The radiology software is a terminal emulator. These run on almost every operating system you are likely to run into in a clinical setting. > 4. There would appear to be some limitations (I.e. proprietary pieces) > that prevent use of Vista imaging modules. Is progress being made in > this direction? Some effort is being made, a good volunteer to coordinate is always helpful. you can review the archives of hardhats for more information. > 5. The local hospital is running Meditech software. Is anyone > integrating (I.e. HL7) Vista from clinics (Radiology or otherwise) to a > proprietary hospital IT environment such as this? I don't know. VistA is capable of HL7 transmissions. I expect that only someone who is trying to add VistA into an existing proprietary hospital environment would put a lot of time into this. Perhaps someone from Medsphere is doing this for the Midland Hospital? > Please note, I am a newbie when it comes to Linux, Open Source, Vista, > and this Vista list, so I apologize if these questions are off-topic, a > bit vague, or have been answered before. I believe these questions are right on topic for Applications level VistA. There has been some discussion about moving applications discussions to another list, but little movement seems to happening on that front. > Also note, I have plenty of > software development (Windows platform ... C++, Delphi, etc), > implementation, and integration experience (for one vendor, anyways) > when it comes to health information systems. I'm not afraid to roll up > my sleeves and dive in but want to make sure that I'm doomed from the > start. I'm not looking for all the answers, but any advice, guidance, > or direction would be greatly appreciated at this point! Previous experience is always useful, but as a friend says, be prepared to enter an alternate dimension of information technology. VistA/MUMPS does things a radically different way compared to most "commercial" information systems. > Thank you very much in advance! > Regards, > Mike Donnelly > MD Technologies Your Welcome, David Whitten ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Power Architecture Resource Center: Free content, downloads, discussions, and more. http://solutions.newsforge.com/ibmarch.tmpl _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
