Agenda Minutes 4
From Oemr
Board of Directors Meeting (telephone conference)
AGENDA
Open Source Medical Software
Friday, July 28, 2006 at 5 PM (EST), 2 PM West coast time:
1. Call to order
2. Additions to agenda
- New Developers
3. Go over financial and organizational status
- Form 1023 -
- Donations -
- Grants
4. Software Development - PHP 5 - MySQL 5 - User forms - Calendar - Integration of Billing inside of OpenEMR - FreeB 2 integration with OpenEMR (X12 progress) - Practice Management module that is an integral part of OpenEMR. - Cosmetic appearance - SVN - Migration plans to (at least) W3C HTML 4.01 transitional, and doing away with frames and smarty - future AJAX support in the framework - A discussion on a new design approach for contributed modules
5. New Developers
7. Comments period
8. Adjourn
Board of Directors Meeting (telephone conference)
Minutes
Open Source Medical Software
Friday, July 28, 2006 at 5:15 PM (EST), 2 PM West coast time:
1. Call to order
Members present:
Andres Paglayan Rod Roark James Perry, Jr. Sam Bowen, MD Peter Walter
2. Additions to agenda
- New Developers
We have been contacted by the following developers who are interested in contributing development to OpenEMR:
Ivan Oprencak of the Eclipse Open HealthCare Framework is interested in integrating OHF into OpenEMR for improving commnunication between primary care providers and consulting specialists.
Michiel Bosman has a consulting firm in Holland and has been following the progress of OpenEMR. He has expessed some interest in facilitating a Dutch translation of OpenEMR.
Ken Chirackel ([email protected].) Rob Harper ([email protected].) Michael Brinson ([email protected].) Michael Barnett
Ivan Oprencak's efforts to work on a communication system were discussed at length.
Peter Walter – There already is a national standard. HL7 is already in wide spread use.
Andres Paglayan – There is an open source health record exchange. We could use an open source API.
Peter Walter – I suggesty we use HL7 up front. Many Commercial handlers already support HL7. I think OpenEMR needs to stau with the standard as much as possible.
Peter Walter – Most doctors are asking for a point – by – point comparison of OpenEMR with other Commercial EMRs. Our real competition are the commercial software packages.
James Perry - We need to be able to demonstrate OpenEMR has standards “x, y, z.”
Peter Walter - We need a direction. We need a set of mile stones “a road map.”
Rod Roark - The purpose is to match the commercial packages.
Peter Walter – We need to avoid too many conflicting modules. This a problem with OS Commerce. OS Commerce has so many modules written in different styles and they conflict with each other. OS Commerce needs a complete rewrite to solve this problem. OpenEMR needs a more well defined – concrete framework so that younger developers can participate. It is important to help others participate effectively. Task lists are good but need to be applicable to people.
I did some work for a not-for-profit using the new concept for forms that I have been working on. I sent out a link to the page but have not yet gotten any feedback. The form looks good. This was developed using the new framework in PHP. Ajax support will improve the forms.
We also need a discussion on a new design approach for contributed modules. This help avoid the problem that OS Commerce faces.
James Perry - There is a big need for doctors to develop their own forms.
Rod Roark - I have previously done some design work on better forms.
Peter walter – This should be coded from MySQL directly to abstract the database. I want to build a tool about how a form should look and contribute this to the existing environment. I need specific applications to use with the new way. I need to test this to make sure that it works.
James Perry - Commercial applications have a lot of point-and-click that fills in a lot of data.
Peter Walter – that is what I am trying to do. I need a tester some one who does not make asumptions. “My sister just asks 'can I run it from my IPAC'.”
James Perry – I know the problem. I did a similar thing where I modified OpenEMR to print multiple prescriptions on a single page. My wife commented “It doesn't look like a real presciption.”
Andres Paglayan – NextGen sells for up to $1-200,000 per practice depending on the size of the practice. I agree that we need ot compare features. For instance how we compare to the Onchit certification. We need to prepare an XL spreadsheet comparing features. I don't think we necessarily need to pay for the cetification, we just need to be able to say we comply with this standard.
Peter Walter – There is a Burger Chain in Atlanta that follows MacDonald's. McDonald's does intensive, expensive traffic studies. Finally MacDonald's makes a decision and places a restaurant. The Burger Chain sets up a restaurant right next door to MacDonald's saving the expense of the traffic studies.
The same priciple applies to OpenEMR. NextGen has features a, b, c. We create features a,b,c for OpenEMR. NextGen pays for the Onchit certification. OpenEMR “complies with the ONCHIT certification.”
Andres Paglayan – I will be glad to pass along the information on these features.
Peter Walter – The commercial cetification may have a paid interest to keep an Open Source System off of the certification list.
3. Go over financial and organizational status
- Form 1023 – As noted in earlier e-mails the IRS cashed the fee for form 1023 and placed the money in the wrong account for Open Source Medical Software (941 account). The department responsible for the form 1023 sent it back claiming that we had not paid the fee. I have sent a letter requesting that the money placed in the 941 account be credited towards the Form 1043 as originally intended. We are waiting for a response.
- Donations and grants are on hold until the 501(c)(3) status is cleared up.
4. Software Development
PHP 5 - Andres Paglayan has been working on debugging PHP5 for the next release.
MySQL 5 - Andres Paglayan may be able to get MySQL debugged as well.
ADODB may need to be upgraded as well
Peter Walter – I don't really like the current ADODB. I would like the group to consider a lighter weight version.
Rod Roark – OpenEMR has its own light weight interface – sql.inc.
Peter Walter – Everything could be folded into sql.inc. I would prefer an object oriented approach.
Andres Paglayan - We can go through sql.inc then convert to an object oriented approach.
James Perry – I started on this before and I can work on it some more.
User forms – See the above discussion Calendar – a calendar rewrite will be necessary to get rid of Smart classes
Integration of Billing inside of OpenEMR – Rod Roark - this is currently on hold but is a necessary step to improve the speed of the billing engine. FreeB does something very complicated to accomplish something that is really very easy.
FreeB 2 integration with OpenEMR (X12 progress) – Rod Rark - this will be unnecessary if we integrate billing inside of OpenEMR.
Practice Management module that is an integral part of OpenEMR. There are already elements being developed in OpenEMR that are rudimentary steps towards a practice management system.
Cosmetic appearance
Sam Bowen – I have not had the time to complete this.
Andres Paglayan - There are develpers that bid these kinds of contracts on line.
Sam Bowen – Andres, can you try to et a bid to do this?
Andres Paglayan – yes.
SVN - Sourceforge has converted to SVN. Rod Roark has not yet converted the files to the new format.
Migration plans to (at least) W3C HTML 4.01 transitional, and doing away with frames and smarty – A calendar rewrite would be necessary
Future AJAX support in the framework – discussed above
A discussion on a new design approach for contributed modules – discussed above
5. New Developers – discussed above
7. Comments period
Peter Walter – I am concerned about the branding of OpenEMR. The company PossibiltyForge has purchased www.openemr.net from Walter Pennington. openemr.net is still listed at the number one slot on Google. We cannot completely control the branding of OpenEMR while PossibiltyForge controls opneemr.net and while Synitech uses the name OpenEMR as well.
I would recommend changing the name of OpenEMR now so the the branding in not diluted. The longer this takes the more dilution of the branding will occur. I would like to investigate some alternative names.
Sam Bowen - This is true but we do not know that PossibiltyForge intends to fork the code. If they link to the SourceForge OpenEMR project page and continue to use the existing OpenEMR code base, then they will actually strengthen the OpenEMR brand name. It will not matter if we wait a bit longer to find out what PossibiltyForge intends.
Andres Paglayan – I have already purchased a license to use the name linuxEMR.
Sam Bowen – OpenEMR actually operates quite well on Windows and various versions of Unix. LinuxEMR will actually have a negative effect on
Andres Paglayan – I want to urge the group to again consider Rails. Yes, This would require a re-write but Rails has many pre-built modules and development speed is a lot faster. Fast enough to make up for the initial pain of the re-write. I would like to forward to you some of the documentation to look this over.
At this point no additional discussion was offered and the meeting was adjourned.
