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Re: [Gnumed-devel] Australian development of Open Source Practice Manage


From: Karsten Hilbert
Subject: Re: [Gnumed-devel] Australian development of Open Source Practice Management Software
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:27:27 +0100

Hello Armin,

> I hope that my day to day use and contacts can help with development
> for GnuMed to be used in Australia, and I believe that now, whilst
> rolling out Easyclaim (Medicare EFTPOS), is the best window of
> opportunity for this platform to grow.

Your knowledge would be very helpful were anyone to extend GNUmed for
use in Australia.

> Refer to the discussion from the Sydney Linux User Group (SLUG) which
> I've uploaded on http://www.freewebs.com/gnumed-aus
Regarding this discussion:

GNUmed already has accessing the PracSoft patient.out file built in. It
can both look for the file in the "standard" location and in a
configurable location. By that, transferring patient demographics into
GNUmed is taken care of.

However, GNUmed lacks any billing facilities. Those would need to be
written.

Ken Wilson was referring to 4 areas of healthcare IT:

1) billing
   - country specific, (near?) impossible to genericise
   - we agree fully and recommend interfacing local solutions

2) lookup data
   - *content* is country specific (drug data, guidelines)
   - structure thereof only partially so
   - some very country specific (drugs)
   - some only in actual content (addressed of colleagues)
   - we recommend
     a) considerate table design to make as much as possible generic
     b) using per-country schemata with appropriate tables where
        necessary which can be foreign keyed into generic tables
     c) linking to local solutions (say, drug DB interface) where needed
   - some of this only *seems* country-specific (such as access
     to drug interaction data) simply because no generic open database
     of the appropriate knowledge has been made available

3) recalls, reminders and tracking is an entirely generic activitiy,
   in fact, it is so generic that one may be tempted to employ tools
   *outside* of GNUmed proper
   - notwithstanding that it is, of course, desirable to interface
     this stuff deeply into the GNUmed workflow - which appropriate
     OSS tools should make possible
   - we already do have rudimentary interfacing with KOrganizer for
     some of this stuff

4) actual clinical notes:

GNUmed does have a clinical record interface as well as a document management 
system both of which are actively used here in Germany
either standalone or in addition to commercial OTS software (for which
we have yet other interfaces). Users are doctors and physical therapists
so this is neither country- nor doctor-specific.

We agree that local commercial support is needed to "round-out" the
experience and to maintain proper updates locally.

Of course, GNUmed lacks all sorts of things and all sorts of
sophistication in the things it does have mainly because not many
people find the time and determination to actually commit themselves
to contributing real work on it. We do have a small and long-term core
team hacking, packaging, marketing, and documenting the project.
On-lookers constantly reassure us that they see slow but steadfast
progress. We wish progress was faster, naturally.

Certainly, priorities are different for different people so not
every would-be contributor actually becomes one. We, as a project,
do welcome any interest and help getting familiar any way we can.

We have pretty much every aspect of the project more or less extensively
documented in the wiki.

Tell us what you think and how you
think you might get involved.

Regards,
Karsten
-- 
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