On Sun, 21 Dec 2003, Jim Self wrote: > Thanks for taking the time to look. I will be glad to help. I think that > MUMPS is vastly underappreciated by those who are not familiar with it
Jim, I have heard this statement enough times that I am convinced that it must have some merit. However, unless 1) its advantages are overwhelmingly obvious or 2) it is trivially easy to learn, getting more people to learn it will be quite impossible. > and that it still has a great deal to offer for building robust and > scalable information systems and particularly for deployment of such > systems on the web. .Net, Java, even Zope :-) camps claim the same. > > 1) How easy would it be to modify VMACS to support human hospitals and > >clinics? > > Why would you want to when you have a Free alternative with as well > proven a record of large scale deployment as VistA? I was hoping that VMACS is smaller and will be easier to install and configure. It may be a good learning system or the kernel for the next generation VistA. > To modify VMACS to support some human hospitals and clinics might > actually be doable but it would not be easy. Well, what good is it if it cannot be easily changed? :-) > It might be a better starting point than many alternatives, but to > modify anything to provide comprehensive integrated support No, the goal would be to modify it enough so that it will become easily changeable. A boot-strapping strategy, if you will. Think EsiObjects (http://www.esitechnology.com/library/downloads/esiobjects/EOdescription.html) but with medical systems-specific (OIO-like) object layer. ... > hospitals are complex insitutions that are generally not well understood > in depth by any of the people working in them. 1) Build complexity slowly. 2) Copy from VistA (reverse-engineer). ... > > 2) Can a bare VMACS instance be replicated and installed to > >bare-harddrive in a few hours? ... > After we have gone through the process a couple more times I expect that > installing a new bare instance could easily fit under half an hour. Wonderful! > This seems a strange question to ask about a hospital information system > in that the effort or time involved in installing a bare system to > harddrive is as nothing I agree. But it is the first hurdle in disseminating the product. > compared to other aspects of fitting or growing a system to fit its host > institution. That's why we need to focus our energy on the "Change-enabling" tools. > Furthermore, a bare system is not very useful. A great amount of data > about hospital procedures, services, staff, clinicians, patients, > schedules, lab tests, etc. must be entered before it would be very > useful. How hard is it to "enter" these "data about hospital procedures, services, etc"? The major thrust of the OIO project (in case you don't already know), happens to be building tools that makes it easy, fast, and reliable to do exactly this. > > 3) How do you handle schema and workflow changes in VMACS? > > This question is too lacking in context for me to begin to answer. > Are you thinking of anything specific? For example, adding the vaccination schedule, related "forms", etc for a new kind of animal called "human". Best regards, Andrew --- Andrew P. Ho, M.D. OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes www.TxOutcome.Org
