[Info-vax] New RoadMap out for VMS

Keith Cayemberg keith.cayemberg at arcor.de
Thu Oct 6 20:24:26 EDT 2011


On 06.10.2011 18:59, Doug Phillips wrote:

> With VistA costing as little as one-tenth as much as commercial
> packages to implement (see the previous wiki link and its references),
> has and is gaining world-wide support, is scalable from the small
> private practice to the largest care providers in the world (both
> private and government), with specialized add-ons being developed as
> needed and it costs $.00 to obtain, it looks to me like VistA has some
> strong legs. I don't see a good future for the commercial packages.

I must agree with Doug.

Vista (DHCP) originated on the OpenVMS Platform, before the port to 
Linux OpenVMS was effectively in all 163 VA Hospitals, 800 clinics, and 
135 nursing homes. Even after now having variants that run on Linux, 
OpenVMS remains the primary VA platform as far as I can determine.

In Vistapedia it is stated:
"The main-stay for the VistA system in the DVA, now is the VMS operating 
system, a true, clustered system."
http://vistapedia.net/index.php?title=What_Software_and_Hardware_does_VistA_need%3F

For those who missed it, there was a "VMS in the Medical Field" Thread 
earlier THIS YEAR. Don't miss Mark Berryman's enlightening post 
concerning CHCS on OpenVMS in "at least 100 DoD facilities."
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.vms/msg/5f78c3bab111753b?hl=en
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.vms/msg/893a122680c1e997?hl=en

And as far as the idea that OpenVMS has no future in the Health Services 
Field, I can only see this as an opinion not based on research of the 
field (but rather someone's local personal experience), and/or perhaps 
based on the over-emphasis of which "commercial" application is making 
the most growth noises at the moment and noted by stock market news 
interests for where a fast buck can be made investing in a growing 
company. Note that VistA and many M (MUMPS) implementations are open 
source.  While other OS's may be "good enough" for most average risk 
tasks. A mission-critical tasks like EHR, EPR and EMR require a platform 
that were designed and engineered as mission-critical system 
architectures. Cutting corners here shows a basic ignorance of how 
extremely hard it is to make a complex platform even 0.0001 percent more 
available on the average. In life-critical environments this small 
difference in reliability/quality/availability can be measured 
empirically in lives and damaged health. Applying the popular IT market 
notion that only the application is important and what OS internals and 
architecture it runs on is unimportant is gross and morally criminal 
negligence on the part of the many IT Consultants who effectively to do 
this in life-critical environments. ONLY OpenVMS and Tandem OS have been 
guaranteed by their owner to be (not five 9's, not six 9's but) 100% 
platform available in owner audited HW/SW configurations. The Tandem OS 
platform however is traditionally much more (in multiples) expensive for 
the equivalent OpenVMS capacity due to Tandem OS's higher reliance on 
the HW based redundancy of it's architecture..

Additionally, there are a LOT of other successful commercial and 
open-source Health Services solutions running on OpenVMS today. And many 
custom solutions based on M (MUMPS). For instance, one of the largest 
University Medical Centers of Germany near to my home has a custom MUMPS 
system on OpenVMS monitoring their Intensive Care Unit. That is my local 
experience. So I don't see how the future of OpenVMS in the health care 
field can be predicted from the business decisions of just 1 commercial 
software provider (Cerner, while Epic has not made any business decision 
specifically against OpenVMS as a DB level server to my knowledge).

EPIC's internal platform landscape includes OpenVMS:
http://careers.epic.com/position-161

Cerner's announcement
http://features.techworld.com/operating-systems/3332/openvms-apps-face-uncertain-migration-path/


OpenVMS-based Health Care Solutions and some known major Customers:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HP OpenVMS Systems Healthcare solutions partners portal
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/solutions/healthcare/
» Cerner Corporation
» IDX Systems Corporation
» InterSystems Corporation
» Misys Hospital Systems
» Ross Systems
» Siemens Medical Solutions of Siemens AG

Physician practice management system vendors on OpenVMS
http://tinyurl.com/3hmuugy
Accumedic Computer Systems, Inc. - AccuMed Client/Server
Cerner Corp. - HNA Millennium
Chart Ware, Inc. - Chart Ware
DeLair Systems, Inc.- DSI Practice Management System
Epic Systems Corp. - EpicCare
ESRI - ArcView
Global Health Systems, Inc. - Global Health Information System (GHIS)
IDX Systems Corp. - IDXtendR--The Group Practice
IDX Systems Corp. - IDXtendR--The MSO
GE Healthcare (formerly IDX Systems Corporation) - Flowcast
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/partners/geh/index.html
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/brochures/idx/idx.html
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/news/idx.html

ABB - PHARMASYST & Flowstream - ABB acquires pharmaceutical software 
technologies
http://tinyurl.com/6gwaun2

BetaData Systems, Inc. - BetaMED - Medical Practice Management System
http://www.betadata.net/medical.htm

CareCentric - MestaMed HHA System
http://www.carecentric.com/
http://tinyurl.com/6brsopu

CareTech Solutions, Inc.
Detroit Medical Center operates 10 hospitals and institutions
http://www.openvms.org/stories.php?story=06/08/09/2368544

Cerner is today still providing Operational Management Services for 
Cerner Millennium on OpenVMS
https://store.cerner.com/items/258
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/partners/cerner/index.html

Clinicom Pty Ltd - CLIMS (Clinicom Laboratory Interface Management System)
http://www.clinicom.com.au/
http://tinyurl.com/6yamax6

Codat, l'informatique des Laboratoires - SYSLAM version 64 bits "LAB64"
http://www.codat.fr/
http://codat.informatique.pagesperso-orange.fr/lab64.htm

edisolve.com, inc. - Middle Solve/2000 +Claims - health care industry 
electronic claims processing
http://www.edisolve.com/
http://www.edisolve.com/SolutionsHealthCare_3.html
http://tinyurl.com/68nbd3n

Excalibur Systems Inc. - Merlin 2000 - Medical Billing Software
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/partners/excalibur/index.htm
http://www.excalibursystems.com/

Fidelity Information Services (formerly Greystone Technology Corp) - 
GT.M Database Technology
http://www.fisglobal.com/products-technologyplatforms-gtm
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fis-gtm/

Genesis Health System
http://www.genesishcs.org
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/brochures/genesis/genesis.pdf
http://www.openvms.org/stories.php?story=04/04/19/7733576

HP - HealthView Connectivity Component (HVCC
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/info/SP4624/SP4624PF.PDF

Information Resource Products, Inc. - APC Ambulatory Grouper with OCE Edits
http://tinyurl.com/3we5clx
Information Resource Products, Inc. - Medicare Inpatient Prospect 
Payment System
http://tinyurl.com/3l5fk2l

Instem LSS Limited - Provantis and Artemis II
http://www.instem-lss.com/solutions/provantis.html
http://tinyurl.com/3tjr8lc

InterSystems Caché in Healthcare - InterSystems HealthShare  - 
InterSystems TrakCare
http://www.intersystems.com/industry/healthcare/
InterSystems demonstrate large-scale Medical Records database capabilities
http://www.intersystems.com/press/2003/emrscalability.html
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/partners/intersystems/index.html

Intersystems M Technologies
http://mtechnology.intersys.com/index.html
DSM for OpenVMS
http://mtechnology.intersys.com/mproducts/dsm7/index.html
Knowledge Based Systems - KB_SQL - SQL/ODBC and reporting environment 
for M Technology (MUMPS) databases
http://www.knowledgebasedsys.com/kbsql.html

McKesson Corporation - TRENDSTAR Decision Support System
http://tinyurl.com/635v4qc
http://features.techworld.com/operating-systems/1001/openvms-survives-and-thrives/
http://www.yardleyconsulting.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=39&Itemid=23
McKesson ClaimCheck and Autocoder were to be ported to OpenVMS

Misys Healthcare Systems - Misys Laboratory
http://www.misys.com/
Misys Healthcare Systems - Hospital Systems (formerly Sunquest)
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/solutions/healthcare/misys.html
http://tinyurl.com/6yjhjoy

Muir Computer Consulting - Healthcare Services Specialist
http://www.amuir.com/

Philips Healthcare - CT Scanners
http://www.healthcare.philips.com/main/products/ct/products/scanners/index.wpd
Philips Healthcare - Magnetic Resonance Imaging - Intera Family MRI 
Products - GyroScan Intera
http://www.healthcare.philips.com/main/products/mri/index.wpd

PLATTON TECHNOLOGIES - Clinicians Gateway - Web Interfaces for Legacy 
Databases
http://www.platton.com/
http://tinyurl.com/5rzddnk

Quest Diagnostics - Clinical Diagnostic Testing Services Worldwide using 
OpenVMS
http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetPDF.aspx/4AA0-8461ENW.pdf

Ross Systems, Inc. - OpenVMS Healthcare Solutions
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/solutions/healthcare/ross.html

SAIC - supports  U.S. Military Healthcare System (MHS) based on OpenVMS 
platform
http://www.saic.com/

Siemens Medical Solutions of Siemens AG
» Siemens Pharmacy, a drug therapy and patient information system
» Medication Management, a software suite designed to manage medication 
delivery cycles
» UNITY, an information integration suite
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/partners/sms/index.html

Tech Time - Health Information Services - STAT! Enterprise Medical 
Management
http://www.techtimeinc.com/products/products.htm
http://www.techtimeinc.com/products/Stat_Brochure.pdf
http://www.techtimeinc.com/products/source/CLINICAL%20NOTES.htm
http://www.na-tech.com/creightonpressrelease10.11.2005.html

Technologie Diffusion - ISIS 3D - image processing and planning system 
for modern radiotherapy
http://tinyurl.com/5ssnqho

Thomson MICROMEDEX
http://www.micromedex.com/

UK National Health Service - Blood and Transplant Services
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms_nhsbt_jan2010_4aa1-3908eew.pdf
NHS Supply Chain -  NHS Logistics
http://www.openvms.org/stories.php?story=08/01/23/5121119
http://www.prlog.org/11227378-nhs-supply-chain-delivers-with-connx.html
Savant Enterprises Limited - PULSE - Blood Transfusion and Tissue 
Banking System
http://www.savant.co.uk/project/pulse

SBPA Systems, Inc. - Group Benefit Administration System (GBAS)
http://tinyurl.com/6gs5wze
http://foresightcorp.info/news_events/releases/012904pr.htm

Sec 1.01 - Paradocs
http://www.sec101.ch/web/guest
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/partners/sec/index.htm

Vedant (formerly Cyrano) - TestStream
http://www.vedanthealth.com/products/teststream/

VistA - Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture
http://www.va.gov/VISTA_MONOGRAPH/index.asp
http://www.worldvista.org/
http://www.hardhats.org/
http://www.hardhats.org/adopters/vista_adopters.html
http://tinyurl.com/6aflgkv

WM-Data Novo Oy (formerly WM-Data Medical Systems)
  - Blood Center Information Systems (BCIS)
  - HIS Systems: P-INFO
  - HIS Systems: PQ-Manager
  - RADU-radiology information system
http://www.max-serv.com/pdf/members/member_14.pdf
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=877701

Woodward Associates (UK) Limited - autoGROUPER - "Grouping" of Episode 
data to determine Healthcare Resource Groups (HRGs)
http://www.woodwardassoc.co.uk/autogrouper.html
http://tinyurl.com/6x7dvyt

Xybion Medical Systems - PATH/TOX System - the most comprehensive 
Preclinical Data Management System - PDF
http://www.xybion.com/Products/VitalPathSuite.aspx
http://tinyurl.com/5sme4ht


I find Health Informations Systems is a typical example of a software 
market where OpenVMS's influence and penetration is grossly 
underestimated by casual observers. To understand how widespread OpenVMS 
solutions are or not, you must first research it intensely, and not take 
statements from single persons or companies at face value. I could 
provide similar long lists of OpenVMS solutions and customers if I had 
the time for many other vertical software markets where people in this 
forum have claimed there is no OpenVMS market (any more).

Cheers!

Keith Cayemberg




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