Comments on: Let your medical practice go open source with Gnumed

By: Set up a Gnumed backend server

Set up a Gnumed backend server — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:26:01 +0000

[...] I covered the front-end of the Gnumed software designed for the medical industry (see “Let your medical practice go open source with Gnumed.”) In that article I showed you how to start working with Gnumed, but limited the [...]

By: Sebastian Hilbert

Sebastian Hilbert — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:24:05 +0000

Hi Wil,

I am unsure I understand what you mean. It depends on what Linux you use.
See http://wiki.gnumed.de for the full details.

If you use Ubuntu make sure you add the package repository as described in the Wiki. Then install gnumed-client. The start GNUmed.

If this does not answer your question you are welcome to contact us via the mailing list or forum.

Full details are available at http://wiki.gnumed.de

Sebastian Hilbert

By: Wil Hob

Wil Hob — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:22:58 +0000

How to install Gnumed?
Yor write:
to install the software you will only have to follow these steps:
Open the Add/Remove Software utility.
…
It is wrong.
How can I start to work with Gnumed ?
hobwillie@yahoo.com

By: Sebastian Hilbert (releasedude) 's status on Wednesday, 21-Oct-09 16:53:45 UTC - Identi.ca

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:53:59 +0000

[...] http://www.ghacks.net/2009/10/20/let-your-medical-practice-go-open-source-with-gnumed/ a few seconds ago from choqoK [...]

By: Sebastian Hilbert

Sebastian Hilbert — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:50:51 +0000

Hi,

My name is Sebastian Hilbert and I am one of the doctors involved in the GNUmed project.

1) GNUmed currently comes without billing for the US. That is going to change. Contact www.palmedtech.com for details. They are offering support and most likely will offer billing support for GNUmed.

2) GNUmed is *not* new and unproven. GNUmed is unknown in the US but is operational in offices in Germany. After all we are doctors and care about stability a lot more then a few other vendors I know of.

3) 90K invenstment and 30K support fees ? Those are dream figures in Germany. Our health system requires highly complicates EMR and billing modules which have multiple certifications and the cost 3K once and 2K per year for support.

4) A support industry will form quickly once GNUmed has billing. Virtually every local IT shop can do it. I agree that physical support is needed. We recommend that GNUmed and billing are seen as different entities. Support for billing module will have to be offered by local entities. That is the business model. We are doctors. We write GNUmed because while more feature rich applications exist in Germany none of them support doctor’s workflows the way they should.

5) The US government effort will be fun to watch as you already have quite capable software like VA Vista. I still fear that lobbyists will persuade government to go for established high priced vendors with questionable track records.

6) GNUmed and GNUcash could work together. However billing for healthcare providers is not what is typically done by GNUcash. Special modules need to be developed (and currently are under development).

7) Always stay up to date. Version 0.3.9 in this article is outdated. Linux distributions update GNUmed every 6 months. However we are releasing bug fixes more often. We are at 0.5.1 now.
See http://wiki.gnumed.de for the latest software and documentation.

8) GNUmed 0.6 series will feature a very nice drug prescrition and documentation plugin. It is developed around the needs of general practioners and will offer interfaces to drug databases.

9) We welcome anyone (coding skills or not) to participate in the GNUmed project. Find more info on http://wiki.gnumed.de

Sebastian Hilbert

By: Rodalpho

Rodalpho — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:52:27 +0000

The US government subsidies are for medical records and billing specifically. They set aside enormoous subsidies over the next 3 years, something like twenty BILLION dollars. If docs don’t go digital before subsidies end, they will have to pay out of pocket, and they can be extremely expensive.

Docs don’t have a great deal of price sensitivity when it comes to this kind of thing. Only those owning their own practice need to worry about it at all, and while the software might cost $90k with $30k/year for support, it’s all obviously a business expense. But $90k is $90k.

Support quality is of course a huge concern as well; all the docs I know expect someone to physically come to their offices to fix issues. Unlike many other expensive services, physicians are distributed throughout the US as people get sick everywhere and depending on specialty earning potential is often immensely higher in rural indiana than downtown SF. I expect entire cottage industries to start up built around those subsidies just to support the software.

That’s not to say that open-sourcing medical records isn’t a great idea, as the very few vendors selling this stuff make an enormous profit for a product that is at best workable. Competition is a good thing.

By: Jack Wallen

Jack Wallen — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:33:52 +0000

@Rudalpho: That is interesting. I just had a conversation with a friend who works for one of the largest consulting firms here in my home state about this (which prompted the article). He has been doing installs for medical practices and there has been no influx of Government monies in this area.

Hopefully Gnumed will get some integration into billing. Wouldn’t it be great if Gnumed and Gnucash could work together?

By: Rodalpho

Rodalpho — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:54:00 +0000

While this is a neat idea, it has several issues.

1) The US government wants all US docs to go digital and will pay for software, hardware, installation, configuration, and even ongoing support for billing software to integrate with medicare/etc for the first couple of years.

2) Gnumed is new and unproven. This software is used for mission-critical applications and needs to be integrated into billing. Not going to be used.

3) There’s only one source of commercial support, and their webpage is in German.