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My research seems to indicate that Clarian uses Cerner as their EMR, which is disappointing, because I was looking for a reason to finally make this joke:

Epic fail.

Almost universally, the development model for the major EMR vendors has been to acquire smaller companies with "the best" niche product, and then try to stick them all together with magic glue to make a full-scale enterprise EMR. They call themselves "best-of-breed", and, frankly, it's amazing that they work at all.

But they don't work well. Since most of the components of the system started out as seperate, independent software packages, they're all reliant on seperate database backends, or they don't structure data the same way. For instance, in one major vendor's product, your primary care doc has to enter your allergies in the ambulatory module, and then if you go to the ER, they'll ask you and enter it again in their Emergency Department module. Being admitted to inpatient? It won't pull in-- they ask you yet again. It's ridiculous.

Here's the shameless plug part: there is an EMR vendor out there that built their own product from the ground up in the past 30 years, so it doesn't suffer this problem. KLAS (an industry rating agency) consistently ranks it #1. Plus, really amazing corporate culture. Obligatory disclosure: yeah, I work there.

Almost universally, the development model for the major EMR vendors has been to acquire smaller companies with "the best" niche product, and then try to stick them all together with magic glue to make a full-scale enterprise EMR. They call themselves "best-of-breed", and, frankly, it's amazing that they work at all.

But they don't work well. Since most of the components of the system started out as seperate, independent software packages, they're all reliant on seperate database backends, or they don't structure data the same way. For instance, in one major vendor's product, your primary care doc has to enter your allergies in the ambulatory module, and then if you go to the ER, they'll ask you and enter it again in their Emergency Department module. Being admitted to inpatient? It won't pull in-- they ask you yet again. It's ridiculous.

Here's the shameless plug part: there is an EMR vendor out there that built their own product from the ground up in the past 30 years, so it doesn't suffer this problem. KLAS (an industry rating agency) consistently ranks it #1. Plus, really amazing corporate culture. Obligatory disclosure: yeah, I work there.

Almost universally, the development model for the major EMR vendors has been to acquire smaller companies with "the best" niche product, and then try to stick them all together with magic glue to make a full-scale enterprise EMR. They call themselves "best-of-breed", and, frankly, it's amazing that they work at all.

But they don't work well. Since most of the components of the system started out as seperate, independent software packages, they're all reliant on seperate database backends, or they don't structure data the same way. For instance, in one major vendor's product, your primary care doc has to enter your allergies in the ambulatory module, and then if you go to the ER, they'll ask you and enter it again in their Emergency Department module. Being admitted to inpatient? It won't pull in-- they ask you yet again. It's ridiculous.

Here's the shameless plug part: there is an EMR vendor out there that built their own product from the ground up in the past 30 years, so it doesn't suffer this problem. KLAS (an industry rating agency) consistently ranks it #1. Plus, really amazing corporate culture. Obligatory disclosure: yeah, I work there.

Check it out!

Oh yeah?!? Well my employer has been working to modernize the health record since 1979!

This article is informative and all, but it doesn't give us techies much insight on the companies that are providing the IT behind these major healthcare organizations. There are a handful of major vendors out there, and a lot of smaller ones. These vendors not only create jobs in their cities, but require the facilities that use the software to hire teams of tech savvy individuals. Only a small percentage of hospitals are using Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and the process for health care organizations to convert from paper charts can sometimes take years. These roll outs give a lot of jobs to consultants too. I'm really surprised the article didn't mention that. I was trying to think of some good links I could give you all that would list some major vendors, but I can't think of what would be fair since I work for a vendor that supplied a software to a number of the healthcare organizations mentioned in the article.

Here's a link to HIS talk though, it's a forum for those of us in the healthcare IT industry.

http://histalk.blog-city.com/

If you read it you'll see a lot of company names repeated, in alphabetical order here are a few of the big ones that come to mind (difinitely not a comprehensive list): Cerner, Epic Systems Corp., GE Healthcare, McKesson,

Sounds like a tech-challenged reporter reporting wide-eyed about crashing "medical devices" which she doesn't really understand.

Epic Systems has products that will satisfy all your requirements. The server will run on Linux (and all major Unix systems), but the clients are mostly Windows based, with some Web functionality quickly coming along.

Hope this helps.

http://www.epicsystems.com/

As a former employee, I know that they often/usually use Unix servers for their database back-end.

I don't know much about their web-based applications, as I was an employee with them before Web-based things were really done anywhere...

As I've not been there for a number of years, I can't say much about their pricing, other than I do know that non-profit medical organizations have implemented their systems. (And the non-profit that I know of is definitely cost sensitive.)

Personally, I see little problem with using Windows platforms for the client ends in the exam rooms...

My thought is to look at the various options available and just choose the best one for the application. If it's on top of BSD or Linux, great. If it is partially using Windows, so what? As long as the patients get the best care, I think that is the most important thing.