EMR based on Mac

[byke32]

I come across this link on apple's website: http://www.apple.com/business/profiles/marlow/.
I'd like to hear what people think of Mac based EMR.
Thanks.

[Tim2]

Thank you b32. The Unix-based GUI that Apple put on in OS X is rock solid and a natural for rugged work.

I wish Apple had contunued work with Power Secretary wich became Dragon Dictate. And they seem to have dropped the ball on Newton when Palm made the on ramp. Hopefully their R&D folks have kept these things in their head.

The G4 and G5 are so beautiful, I'd be afraid to bring mine to work.

From the hobby shop, the Wacom Tablet on the G4 has saves me a bunch of time, cash and paint exposure. I will mock up the first and second washes of watercolor then break out the expensive 300lb paper when satisfied I have a direction.

[BigDoc]

I come across this link on apple's website: http://www.apple.com/business/profiles/marlow/.
I'd like to hear what people think of Mac based EMR.
Thanks.

welcome to Docsboard,
I gave the article a cursory look, I disagree about some of his comments about MACs, they have most of the problems PCs have, I will find a link for you, I used a Mac for several years alongside a PC.
I would not buy an EMR simply because it runs on a MAC, did you notice the article appears on Apple website :o

[buslick]

Powermed also runs on Macs.

www.powermed.com

It is much more expensive than Springcharts.

[Scroggie]

I have a good friend who uses Macs and springcharts as well in IM and Family Practice setting. He swears by it. I can send you his email if you want to ask him about it.

[mwarddoc]

I have a mac and I have 9 PC's on my LAN. Some things I like about the mac, and quite frankly some things I hate. However, this one runs on OS 8.6 and I have several hundred dollars worth of software on it that prohibit me upgrading to OS 9 or OS X without upgrading all the software as well.

Sound familiar?

Same shit, different box, different marketing program, and a lot less available software...a lot less and some of it frankly more expensive (such as a CAD program I bought for office design and it was three times as expensive as a cheap windows program I'd used before. It was so poor performance wise that I gave up, went and bought a cheap PC and bought the windows program again..this is why we never expanded our use of the macs.

[buslick]

I have not used Mac OS X. I have used various other Macs over the years and have never been all that impressed with the performance you get for the price. You get more bang for your buck with an AMD based processor coupled with Windows than you do from a Mac. My office computer motherboard just went bad plus the hard drive got corrupted from a Trojan so I gutted it for parts since it is hard to get a replacement motherboard for old Dell machines. Instead of getting another Dell I got a computer from ABS with a AMD 64 processor. I have a similar machine at home and love it. The thing I like about ABS is that they use brand name parts that make it easy to replace something if something goes bad. Dell uses proprietary parts that are hard to replace if Dell stops making the part. Macs also use proprietary parts which make them harder and more expensive to maintain.

[Kursk]

Buslick - couldn't agree more. Dell has great prices but essentially throw away computers. Even the cases are proprietary so you can't reuse them easily (well, you could plant flowers in them or something like that).

I have been very happy using coolermaster cases, Asus motherboards and AMD processors and as noted by BB - easy to replace parts when needed.

Although I have to admit these last Dells here at work are damn quiet.

[mpike]

I have been inactive on here awhile (major surgery). There are several Mac based EMR's... in fact, since I released them, I have had over 800 downloads, with over 200 of them now actively using the EMR products. They are also listed on AAFP's website. I'll also note several of the practices using them have actually replaced windows based EMRs.

It's interesting because a particular EMR vendor told me it would never happen. (How's it going David?)

I am also presenting at the MYSQL conference coming up and will outline how open source (particularly Mac) are a viable (and superior) alternative of other closed EMR packages (head to head competition).

Anyhow, links to FREE Mac based EMRs:

http://www.care2xmac.com
http://www.openemrx.com
http://www.liferecord.com

Mike

[Kursk]

mpike - welcome back! Hope you are healing well.

[mpike]

I have not used Mac OS X. I have used various other Macs over the years and have never been all that impressed with the performance you get for the price. You get more bang for your buck with an AMD based processor coupled with Windows than you do from a Mac. My office computer motherboard just went bad plus the hard drive got corrupted from a Trojan so I gutted it for parts since it is hard to get a replacement motherboard for old Dell machines. Instead of getting another Dell I got a computer from ABS with a AMD 64 processor. I have a similar machine at home and love it. The thing I like about ABS is that they use brand name parts that make it easy to replace something if something goes bad. Dell uses proprietary parts that are hard to replace if Dell stops making the part. Macs also use proprietary parts which make them harder and more expensive to maintain.

Actually, there is nothing proprietary in Macs... please elaborate. And they key word is corrupted from a Trojan... if you had been using OS X (or linux for that matter), that would not happened.

I was like you also, and I was NOT a fan of Macintosh, but about a year or so ago, I checked out OS X, and have never looked back... in fact, we have put over 150,000 worth of XSERVEs and workstations nationally in the last two months, and the number is going to grow.

There is a major announcement coming out within the next week or so that I will place on here when I get the "ok" to do so.

But a little teaser is this: the number one (commercial) database in healthcare will be released for Mac OS X. There will be a major enterprise healthcare application released in conjunction with this database.

It's a major step in healthcare information technology for the OS X environment. I am still a fan of MySQL, but this new release opens the door for EPIC, IDX and others to fully deply on the OS X environment.

Mike

[mpike]

mpike - welcome back! Hope you are healing well.

Thanks for the welcome back! :)

Actually, the surgery wasn't mine... it was my wife's... and its a perfect example as to why I will always develop free software for medical professionals. More info is here:

http://www.michaelpike.com/personal.html

To all the physicians here who practice and are "in the trenches", you are the lifeline of the world, and anything I can do to make sure you don't get shafted in the realm of IT, I will do.

Mike

[davidtm]

Thanks for sharing your story. (I'm a shrink, so I particularly appreciate telling of stories.) From your wife's pic, I can see the light and joy in her eyes that you must love. Best of luck to all 4 of you!!

[ozzie]

Actually, there is nothing proprietary in Macs. snip..

Well thats kinda not true...
To patch linux on a mac you have to PAY for upgrades..
and yes you and me can use the open source patches, but the average joe user cannot..
and I am a linux fan and to a point a mac fan but still I can get better bang for the buck with intel..
( pissy mac rant client bought snazzy mac laptop and flat screen then had pay $100 or so for an adapter to the mac flatscreen would work on the mac laptop kinda sounds proprietary to me )
mac is another linux solution but not THE solution..
From TCO point of view
Buy any machine keep it for 3 years , replace it donate the old machine the charity take the tax write off and move on.
Replacing / upgrading desktops server given today hardware cost make no sense even to a bean counters.
I have no problems having a mac server and windows clients,
I have not problems having windows server and mac clients
I have big problem when I have windows clients and mac clients. its just a pain double av clients . Generally more expensive mac software , file issues.

Whatever you do do one way or the other but not both it will end up a nightware.
Spare me any rants about one versus the other ..

oz

[buslick]

When I upgraded my mothers Mac I had to get almost all the parts from Apple. In my book that is proprietary. Not sure what definition of proprietary you are using mpike.

[mpike]

When I upgraded my mothers Mac I had to get almost all the parts from Apple. In my book that is proprietary. Not sure what definition of proprietary you are using mpike.

How long ago was it? Macs now have :

USB1 and USB 2
FireWire
Standard VGA ports (along with DVI and ADC)
Standard AGP graphics port
Standard hard drive interfaces
Standard DVD Writers (I can go to best buy and use any one on the market)

I'm not saying they WEREN'T proprietary at one time (the old iMacs for example)... but Apple saw the light and has done away with the proprietary stuff for almost two years.

there are arguments for both sides as Oz has pointed out... but there are many more arguments AGAINST the operating systems in general. The number one being Microsoft Windows... I don't care how much more a piece of hardware costs, the first time you get hit with a Microsoft worm, and you have a 919 employee hospital down for the count because the worm brings the PCs and hardware down to a halt, it would worth the extra few bux to get linux or Mac OS X.

Even on a smaller scale - you are a doc - you have years worth of information on your system - boom you lose it. If you are like most, it's not backed up, or if it is, not as well as you think. Even if it is backed up entirely, do you have an entire day or two to devote to bring your system back up?

Sure, if you're an office secretary or someone of that nature, maybe you can spare paying a few bills for a few days. When you are in the medical profession, you do not have the time to do these things. You need information when you need it, and available without failure.

The old "Mac vs. PC" debate reminds me of the old BBS days :) Anyhow, to each their own I suppose - I just wanted to educate everyone on the "new apple", as opposed to the old one which so many people still believe exists.

Microsoft Office 2004 is available on the Mac, superior to the intel version in almost every way. And if all else fails, I can run Windows XP in a window with Mac OS X... and it will never affect the rest of my system. And when you have a 64 bit G5 processor, Win XP under VPC runs faster than a 3.0GHZ Dell.

Mike

[ozzie]

Mike you are starting to sound like a SUN salesperson . Blinded by the SUNlight, too much SUN in their eyes and not enough time to let reality in..

Please please please you CANNOT say by using a mac or linux you dont have to bother with any backup systems because neither will ever blow up .. Thats a crock and you know it. Linux can die a very painful death just like MS can..
Disaster recovery is no faster on either system.
It is foolhardy to imply that using linux/mac is a substitute for decent backup system.

Results 1 - 10 of about 9,900,000 for "problem with windows XP"
Results 1 - 10 of about 14,300,000 for "problem with os X".
Results 1 - 10 of about 17,600,000 for "problem with linux".
Results 1 - 10 of about 14,600,000 for "problem with microsoft".
So the google show that the felines are not without their fair share of problems ..

I dont see it as a debate like you as I try to be for the most part agnostic on both ends. Solutions should be based on needs, infrastructure ( both existing and new) not a brand name..
I laud what you have have done but sun style marketing is not the best way to go.

People realised that they dont have pay thru the nose for a sun tape drive and or hard drive array. Also that solaris aint so hot any more .. pun intented LOL
Now the hype is over Sun is having a hard time..

oz

[buslick]

This was an older Mac, probably bought 5 years ago, I worked on it 2 years ago. Good to hear Mac has changed their ways in regards to hardware.

[buslick]

Do you think your EMR run well on the new mini Mac Mike Pike? If so that could be a very interesting alternative to a Windows based system. If it will run your EMR I may even buy one to check out your EMR.

[buslick]

Looking at your web sites it appears you now have 3 emrs Mike. What are the differences between the 3? Which one would be best for a 5 doctor group practice?

[mpike]

Looking at your web sites it appears you now have 3 emrs Mike. What are the differences between the 3? Which one would be best for a 5 doctor group practice?

Bryan:

I don't want to cross the "terms of service" for docsboard and appear to be advertising (even though they are free), and it won't let me send you a private message from here, so drop me a note at:

michael.pike(at)mac(dot)com and I will give you the low down on each one...

The Mac-mini would be a perfect solution, although I would upgrade it's ram from the 256meg to 512meg

Mike