More questions in today's e-mail about the AAFP Open Health Record project.
It's based on the Oceania EMR. The company no longer exists .. and I don't know much about what happened .. who currently owns the intellectual property, or what the current status of the software is. It was a progressive system in its day – developed by folks who were trend setters in XML and applications of SGML to healthcare.
Courtesy of the Internet Archive, You can view a demo of the circa 1999 version (well .. just a few screenshots .. but you can get an idea of what it's all about).
—
Meanwhile .. back in our 50+ physician practice .. we struggle with decisions about what to do about an EMR. We've been using the Mysis EMR on a trial basis for 18 months. Lot sof problems recently with it recently. I'm becoming convinced — after using it for all of this time – that this product just won't do. There are too many basic problems with the system to make it clinically useful. Usability is sacrificed, and complexity dominates. I'm trying my best to give it a 'college try' but is still frustraing on a daily basis.
I visited another group of family physicians this afternoon. They're implementing the Greenway practice management system and EMR. High hopes to reduce their $150,000/year of transcription costs. I was suprised by how little they knew about the details of the Greenway product. They didn't do much homework. I'll do a demo of Greenway later in the week. Will post my impressions here.
