Dr. Aldis, Thanks for you comments. "John W. Aldis" wrote: > > You are right, that is how the companies should be showing off their > programs. That is pretty impressive. I think I could actually use such > a program if I were allowed to tailor some of the templates and screens.
If you install your own copy you can directly edit the screens. THe most knowledge you would need is some basic HTML. THe are dynamic elements to it but I think most people that wanted to tailor it could catch on pretty quickly. AFA the templates go. You can create them right there at the site. I am NOT going to say that it is an easy thing to do. There is a Help button that gives you a basic idea of how the template generator works. You can also review how the existing ones look in the generator, as well as how they work in the patient Encounter. Ideally you would first use a template in an Encounter then see how it is constructed. This would be the most educational method. Dr. Chason Hayes ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is the most experienced at building these templates and will answer questions via the FreePM discussion list. Any templates contributed to the demo site will be put into the next distribution of FreePM. Proper attribution will be given if you send me an email notifying me of which one(s) you built. Sorry, I'm not going to pour through the logs to try and figure it out. <s> > Is there any "health maintenance tracking" (periodic immunizations, > BP/Cholesterol checks, PSA checks, PAPSs, etc.)? This would be used to > inform patients about indicated follow-up evaluations or periodic > treatments (immunizations, etc.). We have not yet built these in but would gladly take input on the discussion list for the most requested items and work from there. > Is there also some way to get some summary data for the practice as a > whole (eg., "What percentage of women are current with their mammograms > and PAPS?")? Yes. see below. > What sort of "output" does the program allow? For example, if I want to > send a copy of this record to a colleague by mail, fax, or e-mail, how > would that be done. If a patient is referred to me from another office, > which EMRs can this program accept the patient's records from? If I > want to convert the data to another EMR, is that possible? If I want to > do a tailored search, how can that be done? All of these questions stem > from the more basic question: How is the data collected and stored? In > what format? Let's just skip to here and see if we can answer them all at once, more or less. The data is stored in an object database. We a few already written reports (if you will) that are output in HTML and allow for PDF generation. You can also tell it to output in plain text. There is a very generic XML output capability. We are watching this area closely but until there is some sort of concensus on what an XML EMR should look like we are not committing resources to a specific format. Converting the data to a standard ouput format is a matter of writing the scripting to generate it. More powerful is that you can connect and share data among several different data sources. We have not yet written an interface to another EMR but we have written one to atleast one popular practice management application. Instead of me rewriting this information I invite you to read about how distributed you can make your EMR system with FreePM, hosted behind a SSL enabled Apache server and using ZEO clients. http://www.zope.org/About this example shows but one combination of possibilities. Yes it also has email connectivity but this must be configured for the server you install it on. A FAX server can pickup the PDF prescriptions and / or reports and send them as directed. Again this needs to be configured for each installation. > I have a fairly large and high-resolution screen, so I was surprised > that I still needed to use scroll bars -- which is somewhat annoying > when I am putting in data. I wonder what sort of monitor the program > requires to avoid the need for scroll bars. You can of course reduce your font sizes. I think that might help. But it basically comes down to the limitations when working with HTML and trying to remain as browser neutral as possible and tring to keep the number of clicks to a minimum. I remain open to suggestions and contributions to enhance the usability of FreePM. BTW: To answer your question 1200 x 1600 on a 21" monitor will work until some of you data list exceed that limit as well. The real answer is that with a constantly growing, dynamic application you will always have scroll bars. > I'll definitely bookmark that site. Very impressive. Interesting > "pricing" too. Yes. We thought that would be popular. <g> What 'should' be more popular is the fact that you will never have your data held hostage by a vendor's upgrade decisions. FreePM has been designed and influenced over the past three years by a group of physicians and informaticians with an interest in opensource software. The decisions I made did not always make all of them happy. In fact, some of them were quite bent out of shape at times<s>. What we have in the end though is a framework that is useful as it is but completely configurable and customizible for the more demanding sites. HTH, ____________________________________________________ Tim Cook, President - Free Practice Management, Inc. http://www.FreePM.com Office: (731) 884-4126 ONLINE DEMO: http://www.freepm.org:8080/FreePM _______________________________________________ FreePM Support List [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freepm-discuss
