[Gnumed-devel] Gnumed FAQs

[James Busser]

Hi all

Appended is a draft answer to another question. The developing draft 
collection is available for viewing at David Grant's wiki at:
http://sidicpc22.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/bin/view/Gnumed/GNUMedFaqs

If prompted for credentials you can use as user: TWikiGuest  and as 
password: guest

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What might it cost to run?

As GnuMed can be obtained without fee, self-sufficient persons will 
find their only costs will relate to their hardware and, for multi-user 
and remote access, to their network. Some Open Source communities have 
been able to identify and provide economically priced hardware 
solutions --- see for example the OSCAR project
http://67.69.12.117/purchasing.php
Caveat: While GnuMed may itself cost nothing, "full" EMR and practice 
support is unlikely to be achieved until later versions, and so some 
users' needs may in the meantime have to be met using other --- 
potentially "proprietary" --- software.

The costs of self-sufficiency must also be kept in mind. Needed will be 
the ability to install, configure and troubleshoot (to the point of 
debugging) packages on your operating system(s) as well as to train and 
support your own office staff. Even if you are able to do this you may 
find the erosion into your total time available, and the disruption to 
your medical practice activities, to be prohibitive and your enjoyment 
may come more from helping to improve GnuMed than in doing all of your 
own support.

Most physicians will want or need skilled computer support people to do 
some or all of their computing support. Especially for a first 
implementation you would want or need to secure ample help with the 
hardware and network design plus software installation and 
configuration and training. Once your system is functioning smoothly 
you will likely want to structure an arrangement in which these people 
provide a base amount of ongoing support, with additional service on a 
"pay as you go" basis. Because you are unlikely to need a full-time 
person (at least not on an ongoing basis) it will make tremendous sense 
to co-ordinate your needs with those of one or more other GnuMed-based 
medical practices in order to make feasible a critical mass of 
sustainable local support.

Having said all of the above, a few ballpark numbers may be helpful 
predicated on i) Open Source costing the same or less for support and 
ii) your NOT having to pay acquisition costs, nor pre-pay for future 
development --- you would pay only toward any of those GnuMed core 
enhancements, or customizations, whose costs --- time, energy or money 
--- would make sense to share. In Canada, one well-established EMR 
vendor charges the equivalent of $US 2100 per full-time physician 
equivalent in the medical practice per year which includes 
installation, support, and any bug-fixes and feature-enhancements 
issued within the year. A different vendor charges about $US 1500 per 
physician per year. Talk to some local computer support people to 
assist with some calculations. As soon as we collect any of our own 
real examples of costs, we can share the information.