Migration from other software

Submitted by Guest on Tue, 01/12/2009 - 17:25

General User's Discussion

I am the technical support person for a group of veterinary hospitals in the Canberra area, and we are currently considering moving from our current proprietary VPMS to OpenVPMS.

I have been asked by the directors about the advantages and disadvantages of migration, and I have explained the benefits of open source vs closed source. Since we are dealing with a number of practices, and a large database, the question about usability and maturity are hot topics.

Quite simply, what features are missing in OpenVPMS that you miss from other VPMS software?

I have looked through the demo, but the opinion of the community might just affect the final decision.

Off the top of my head, the areas I am unsure about are pathology documents, dicom/pacs integration and product inventory/ordering.

I am a great supporter of open sourced software and really appreciate your feedback.

Re: New General User's Discussion Forum topic: Migration from ot

Submitted by Matt C on Tue, 01/12/2009 - 19:00.

Hi there,
We migrated from netvet. In our experience the current version of OpenVPMS
exceeds it in all respects except speed of use. Netvet was exclusively text
based and as such never had to cope with the requirements we have for open
vpms (document attaching, image viewing etc etc).

The areas of pathology documents and product inventory/ordering are in
development.
Dicom/pacs integration will require a lot more work. Does your current VPMS
do this for you? I was not aware of any that did.
Cheers
Matt

Re: New General User's Discussion Forum topic: Migration from ot

Submitted by receptiveit (not verified) on Tue, 01/12/2009 - 22:14.

Hi Matt,

In the area of Dicom/PACS, our VPMS does not integrate this for us at the moment, but there is an additional module that we could purchase for a fee. We are currently using DCM4CHEE as our PACS server, and found it to be quite good.

Pathology documentation is semi-manual at the moment, with files coming in by email, or downloaded via special software. The VPMS attaches the document to the patient by filename, specifically having a visit number prefix, which the pathology labs generates based on the pathology request.

I am not 100% sure on the inventory and ordering process at the moment, but I suspect that this is an area that will be scrutinised as we do carry quite a bit of stock.

I was not really asking specifically about those features, but rather generalising. We are at the point now where we can either continue down the current road of proprietary software, or go for something open sourced.

The road ahead in proprietary land involves upgrading our MS server, MS Office, TS Cals, and database. While the cost is substantial, the perceived cost of jumping ship to another VPMS is an unknown quantity, and could potentially be more costly.

Areas which have been raised as concerns are;

No telephone support from the company we pay licensing to
Open source could not possibly be better than commercial software
Features might be missing
Things might go wrong that will make us lose money (specifically reminders, invoices and statements)
Staff need re-training in the new software

Now I know that some of that is unfounded, but some concerns are valid, and some of it is all perception. Like everything, we need to approach a possible migration with our eyes open to iron out the kinks early.

I might even be able to get rid of one of the last Windows machines in the place... the terminal server!

In case anyone hasn't guessed our VPMS by now, its a certain international company with an office in QLD that is releasing an MS-SQL version of their product soon.