David Chan, MD writes: ‘…OSCAR has been certified by OntarioMD under the Physician IT Program. The list of certified products will be published at www.ontariomdtsp.ca. From OntarioMD: �Certification means that the product has passed a set of requirements to ensure that the product can support defined standards for clinical and practice management software. Ontario physicians helped define these standards. More information on the standards and the certification process is available on the OntarioMD website at www.ontariomd.com/en/services/cycle3.jsp.�

there is now commercial support for OSCAR from here. For whoever needs help installing OSCAR and long term support …

David Chan is announcing the availability of “OSCAR”:http://www.oscarhome.org version 2.0 which features Drugref.org’s Free and Open Source drug database, easy internationalization, a laboratory module, improved billing and more. Read more for the full text of the announcement.

We will be releasing v2.0 shortly on SourceForge. This new version
incorporates all the enhancements our Brazillians friends have added – you
can change to Brazillian Portugese by simply changing the browser
properties! Anyone interested in putting in other languages? It’s now a very
simple process. Moreover, they have added support for PostgreSQL. They are
in the process of translating the Help manual to Portugese. You can access
the demo via:
http://oscarhome.org

Other major enhancements include:
(1) Thanks to the drugref.org group, the oscarRx module uses a totally Open
Source drug database web-service (running PostgreSQL and Python). The
database you see in the Demo site has the Canadian drug database in it. But
the idea is that one can access drug info from any country. I hope more
folks will join Horst and Ian with their excellent work.
(2) The Lab module is now in place. It parses HL7 lab data from a lab (MDS
Lab in Canada for now) and integrates the data with the patient. There is a
work flow management build in for the health care providers to read and
handle the lab data.
(3) There is a whole new section for puttingin “measurements”. Features
include data reports and graphing. Data is copied to the narrative part of
the eChart automatically to avoid double data-entry. It’s highly flexible.
(4) A few fixes: Disease Registry can use different coding system;
immunization module is fixed.
(5) The billing system is slightly enhanced. You can set properties at
install time what billing module to take. There is now modules for Ontario
and British Columbia.

New features coming soon:
(1) Direct integration with PING – the Personal Health Record system from
MIT/Harvard.
(2) Decision Support (Diabetes, Hypertension, and hyperlipidemia) via
web-services
(3) oscarCitizens v1.0 is now available via our CVS on SourceForge. It is
a companion system to OSCAR EMR for these functions:
– making appointment
– secure messaging
– personal health record
– access OSCAR EMR record
– (soon) decision support

Enjoy!

Yours sincerely,
David

David H Chan, MD, CCFP, MSc, FCFP
Associate Professor
Department of Family Medicine
McMaster University

A group of physicains are looking at developing a USA focused release of OSCAR.

While their website (servedoctors.com) seems to be more focused on selling stethoscopes, they do list a product called “ServeDoctors EMR v1.1” for release in Feb 2004.

As found from a posting on the OSCAR forum at: http://67.69.12.117/oscarForum/viewtopic.php?t=59

I would like to invite doctors and programmers to post their thoughts about necessary changes for OSCAR to be used within the USA.

Please spend some time using the demo at http://67.69.12.117/index.php?pageId=3 and then post your opinions or suggestions.

These are some of the major goals that USA developers have for OSCAR right now:

>> Integrated USA billing module that will act as a data clearinghouse for OSCAR for various private insurance billing and medicare/medicaid

>> Symantic and quantitative tracking adaptations. For example: Some lab values are reported with different units in Canada vs. USA. Most symantic changes are fairly easy to make, but we need more feedback from USA doctors regarding any terminology that appears to be abnormal

>> USA typical templates. OSCAR has the flexibility for you to change the templates on your particular installation with no programming knowledge required. In the near future a whole library of USA ready templates will be available as an add-on or import into the standard OSCAR installation.

>> Enhanced progress note/encounter documentation features. The main enhancements here are: integration of flow sheet usage into encounter documentation, providing better vital signs tracking, and USA typical physical exam.

If you are a programmer in the USA who is interested in helping enhance OSCAR, please contact me [ troy@servedoctors.com ] so that we can collaborate and be more effective working together instead of apart.

Dr. David Chan announced on the OpenHealth(tm) list: The latest OSCAR is now available on SourceForge. You can now either install automatically after Linux install or do so manually if you want to configure your existing system differently. The new version contains quite a number of new and improved features. Unfortunately, there isn’t really a clean upgrade from v1.0 🙁 The full announcement is within.

The latest OSCAR is now available on SourceForge. You can now either install automatically after Linux install or do so manually if you want to configure your existing system differently. The new version contains quite a number of new and improved features. Unfortunately, there isn’t really a clean upgrade from v1.0 🙁

Another exciting news is that our Brazillian collaborators have been working
with us to produce a Portugese version of OSCAR. I’ll let them tell you
about their demo site. You can also follow their process from our CVS
location:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/oscarmcmaster/oscar_mcmaster/
web/

Enjoy!

Yours sincerely,

David

David H Chan, MD, CCFP, MSc, FCFP

Associate Professor

Department of Family Medicine

McMaster University

David Chan, MD will be holding a workshop on OSCAR, the Open Source Clinical Application Resource. OSCAR is a full-featured Free and open source electronic medical record geared toward family practitioners. Support contracts are available for it. The workshop will be held June 18-22,2003 at McMaster University, 1200 Main St. W., Hamilton, Onbario, Canada. Details can be found here. ‘…Tired of paying high software licensing fees, royalties and lock-in to specific vendors? Learn why this FREE – EMR software is what you have been looking for. Find out why a growing number of large and small offices are using this new, innovative software for their office automation and electronic medical records…’

Dr. David Chan at the 2002 OSHCA conference has announced the availability on Sourceforge of OSCAR version 1.0. In development since 1988, the projects’ informative web site says: “There is no other software out there with OSCAR’s capabilites and no other Open Source clinical application so advanced…” Editor: The demo done at OSHCA revealed a fully functional, mature electronic medical record.