Adding an Electronic Medical Record (EMR)

I've decided to computerize my office and to get rid of all the paper that is now threatening to consume all of my time, energy and resources.

I've searched high and low and have decided that I don't want to go with a private vendor.  They just go out of business and then hold your data hostage.  They also charge you and arm and a leg and provide poor customer service for their software that doesn't really work all that well anyways.

And on top of all that, their software usually has to run on (gasp!) WINDOWS!  Everybody KNOWS that you just can't use Windows for mission critical work.  It is too unreliable and crashes to frequently, and the viruses attacking it are too numerous - to the point that over half of your computer's power has to be devoted to virus defense!

So I've decided to go with a LINUX system that is open source, free and developed and maintained by a wonderful group of Physicians and computer professionals that are devoted to only one thing:  the perpetuation of top notch free software for the betterment of people.

So, I'm reading my first 1000 page book of a set of three books to learn about Linux, and I am configuring and building a server to run this thing.  Some very nice people in the Linux community have decided to help me out for free, and I'm taking them up on it.

This system will also allow my patients to log in to view summaries of their medical charts for travel/emergency reasons.  I'll be able to better interface with Pharmacies and other diagnostic testing and imaging facilities.

The future is really exciting beyond this new frontier - and it is especially exciting with respect to this new free EMR from McMaster University (OSCAR).

All I have to do now is to build an economic support structure for this new EMR idea and I think that it'll start to grow exponentially to take over EMR's in Alberta!

Just have to climb this very steep learning curve......