OSCAR & OntarioMD CMS v3.0

The OSCAR team has spent this last week going through OntarioMD's CMS Specification v3.0 conformance testing.

CMS Specification v3.0 introduces requirements to provide better functionality to support chronic disease management, to enhance querying and reporting capabilities within CMSs, and to connect CMSs to the comprehensive knowledge resources available on the OntarioMD.ca physician website. It also includes refinements to existing requirements to better serve the needs of the healthcare community.

The CMS Specification also prepares certified Offerings for e-Health initiatives such as the Ontario Laboratory Information System (OLIS) and the provincial Diabetes Registry.

Official results are pending, but our team is very confident about the outcome.

Once achieved, the certification as a CMS v3.0 compliant application will mark another major milestone in the life of the OSCAR open source project.

OSCAR - The #1 Open Source EMR in Canada

OSCAR users may believe it to be an obvious statement, considering the large number of clinics and doctors that rely on OSCAR everyday in support of their delivery of world class patient care, but OSCAR is the #1 open source EMR in Canada.

OSCAR powered clinics can be found across this great, multicultural land, from Prince Edward Island on the Atlantic Ocean, across 6,000 kilometers of lands and lakes to Vancouver Island on the Pacific.

There is a French version of OSCAR being developed in Quebec, and there is a Portuguese version of OSCAR that was developed in Brazil.

OSCAR EMR is spreading everyday! Recently, OSCAR has been gaining a global footprint.

To illustrate, the map below shows the global downloads of the OSCAR installation tutorial in the last couple weeks.



What this graphic shows is that on average, every day, someone in the US is reading about installing OSCAR. Every second day, someone in India and someone else Mexico is doing the same. Once a week, someone in Argentina and Austria is giving it a go.

How Much Can Open Source Save You?

As it turns out - lots! In a recent report (via Ars Technica), the Gendarmerie Nationale identified significant cost savings as a result of moving towards open source applications and platforms:

France's Gendarmerie Nationale, the country's national police force, says it has saved millions of dollars by migrating its desktop software infrastructure away from Microsoft Windows and replacing it with the Ubuntu Linux distribution.

The Gendarmerie began its transition to open source software in 2005 when it replaced Microsoft Office with OpenOffice.org across the entire organization. It gradually adopted other open source software applications, including Firefox and Thunderbird. After the launch of Windows Vista in 2006, it decided to phase out Windows and incrementally migrate to Ubuntu.

Since 2004, [...] the Gendarmerie has saved up to €50 million on licensing and maintenance costs as a result of the migration strategy.

Interestingly, the Gendarmerie noted that their migration to open source was less troublesome than the alternative:

[Gendarmerie Lieutenant-Colonel Xavier Guimard] believes that the move from Windows to Ubuntu posed fewer challenges than the organization would have faced if it had updated to Windows Vista.

"Moving from Microsoft XP to Vista would not have brought us many advantages and Microsoft said it would require training of users," said Lt. Col. Guimard. "Moving from XP to Ubuntu, however, proved very easy. The two biggest differences are the icons and the games. Games are not our priority."

OSCAR EMR users have long experienced the benefit of open source software including reduced support costs, and more robust and secure infrastructure.

myOSCAR - A Secure OSCAR EMR Adjunct For Personal Health Records

myOSCAR is a Personal Health Record solution that has the nice quality of being able to tightly integrate with the OSCAR EMR that you've deployed in your practice.

The practitioner sets the level of information to share with the patient, then the systems work securely together to keep the data synchronized, saving time and effort for both the practice and the patient.

When deployed together, the OSCAR EMR + myOSCAR PHR combination delivers an excellent platform for both improved patient care and practice management.

Upcoming OSCAR Users Event

The BC OSCAR User Group invites you to come and hear about Free / Open Source software and how physicians and midwives are driving the OSCAR (Open Source Clinical Application Resource) Electronic Medical Record in BC.

There will be a presentation by Dr David Chan, from McMaster University, OSCAR’s founder, and the OSCAR user community in BC. OSCAR users will demonstrate the EMR including use with voice recognition software, tools for maternity and newborn care, leading chronic disease management tools, prescribing tools, billing and much more!

OSCAR is an open-source (free), Canadian web-based EMR, developed and driven by its users. Users pay no licensing costs and have the freedom to choose who provides support. There are a large number of users in Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec, PEI, and recently Alberta. It has won several prestigious awards for IT innovation.

Where:

BC Women’s Hospital
Lecture theatre room D308
(Use the entrance off Heather St & 29th; enter through doors under BC Women’s Health Centre sign, proceed up one floor via elevators, and follow hallway to your right as you exit elevators.)

When:

Thursday, March 26, 2009 – 6:30 pm to 9:00pm

Cost:

Free

For more information, and to RSVP, please visit the OCUS website.