I wanted to weight in here so that there can be some on-record
discussion coming from us directly. I do not in any way want to offer
a general commentary on why some people want to use MUMPS or don't
want to, or X language is better than Y, I am not looking to instigate
a flame war or really say that what we are doing is a better or worse
approach from a technical standpoint than anything else. It is the
right approach for us. Additionally I need to make clear that this is
a preliminary announcement, we have moved beyond proof of concept but
there is still a lot to be done. We now have 2 beta sites we will be
rolling out over the course of the next 12-18 months while actively
seeking 1 or more additional sites.
What we are doing:
*Implementing a CPRS-like web based interface
*Breaking a live VistA server into static libraries and components
that can be utilized outside of a running GT.M instance or at-least a
continuously running instance
*Extracting datasets and so forth tied up in CACHE to be accessible in
other things including MySQL
*Integrating features that based on our market aren't present or are
underrepresented in a VistA/WorldVistA/etc installation with regard to
scheduling and X12 electronic billing.
*Enabling a lot of interfaces and integration points so that both data
and logic, that from our standpoint were difficult to work with in
VistA, are accessible using things like a PHP module and web services.
*The entirety of what we are going will be licensed under a feasible
combination of GPL and LGPL
What we aren't doing:
*Saying the M/Mumps/WorldVistA etc is good, bad or otherwise
*Saying we have a completed production ready system right now
*Saying it is trivial to get from where we are now to a completed
production system
*Building a web based front-end that uses RPC/etc to talk to a VistA
server
With respect to understanding the industry and the history of VistA we
aren't novices here, we are by most measure the largest open source
healthcare solution in patients, sites and dollars in the US. We
understand the engineering challenges. We understand that in the past
people have tried various other strategies and have failed. I am happy
to have fruitful discourse about what we are doing, I am not
interested in having a zealous back and forth about why we should or
shouldn't be doing this. If you disagree with our approach or think we
are crazy for x,y, or z that is absolutely your right and noted for
the record.
With regard to the "doomed to fail" comments, we are not naive and
have been doing complicated difficult things with Open Source with a
combined experience amongst are staff of more than 100 years. People
are welcome to their opinion but I think if you look at the life of
virtually any large open source project today it arose from a
situation where a lot of people said "doomed to fail". Linux, Apache,
MySQL, and PHP as well as many others have all, at times, had that
comment made about them and they now represent the most popular system
for each of their respective markets .
Our analysis of the market indicated that there were a lot of
institutions interested in VistA based solutions that for a variety of
practical reasons had difficulties integrating with the current
architecture, making customizations to the current architecture or
addressing needs in a different way than the current architecture can
reasonably provide for, that is our motivation for doing what we are
doing.
I expect that the first open source licensed code bundle we will be
releasing is still several weeks away. As the discussion indicated
there are a lot of technical challenges to what we are doing and we
want to first release to be reasonably accessible with regard to its
ease in compiling and getting running a basic version of the WebVistA
system. We do have some screenshots and such we will be releasing as
time permits.
I hope this clarify to some extent where we are and I am happy to
response to any inquiries beyond that. Thanks.
-David Uhlman
Customer Happiness Guru & CEO
ClearHealth Inc.
On May 22, 11:17 am, st...@stevenowen.com wrote:
> Ah, now I see that Fred mentioned something about re-compling mumps code to
> C...that seems a bit odd if they can access the mumps backend via MJSP
> Chris Richardson writes:
> > Steve;
> > I'm not at odds at all with rehosting CPRS as a thin client. The
> > coordination of the clients with the server is a major headache in the
> > field. The webification of VistA is the logical extension of the
> > technology, but if you read the statements being made, that was not at all
> > clear from their words. MUMPS never was to run on the client, but it is
> > very difficult to run CPRS without VistA and the RPC interface (or weblink
> > or any of the other technologies being brought forward) on the server.
> > I can't tell you the number of times I have seen people say, "CPRS is
> > great, but now if we could just get rid of that darned VistA" without
> > knowning that the power of the rendition of CPRS or a web interface is still
> > the VistA-MUMPS back end service. BTW, the idea of running VistA from the
> > web is not new, Jim Self and his folks at UC Davis have accomplished this
> > about 15 or more years ago.
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: <st...@stevenowen.com>
> > To: <Hardhats@googlegroups.com>
> > Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 9:59 AM
> > Subject: [Hardhats] Re: ClearHealth project compiles VistA to MUMPS-LESS web
> > interface.
> >> I think they are taking the right approach by developing a rich browser
> >> client as the next generation CPRS. That's why I'm putting together a
> >> developer's virtual machine based on M/gateway's Enterprise Web Developer
> >> platform. Write your methods on the mumps side, compile the php pages on
> >> the mumps side, and output them to your webserver. Plus, it has custom
> >> tags
> >> to make use of javascript toolkits like extJS.
> >> Yeah, very cool stuff this web 2.0
> >> Roger A. Maduro writes:
> >>> Chris,
> >>> As I said, I've head some extensive discussions with the Clear Health
> >>> guys on this. They took at look at CAV Systems' MJSP
> >>> <http://mjsp.sourceforge.net/>. This is an open source toolset that
> >>> can be used to create rich HTML clients that can run on top of Mumps
> >>> applications. MJSP has been used by CAV Systems to create some
> >>> beautiful browser-based web apps for Mumps applications. I have seen
> >>> these demoed and seen the CAV guys write HTML code for the base Mumps
> >>> app on the fly. It's impressive. CAV Systems' code however (for the
> >>> web piece) is J2EE. You can read the sourceforge documentation to get
> >>> the details.
> >>> ClearHealth has been doing all their browser work using PHP. Thus they
> >>> either used the MJSP code that connects to Mumps to connect to the RPC
> >>> broker or developed similar code using MJSP as the model (I am still
> >>> not clear). Then they used PHP to render the web front end. What the
> >>> Clear Health people told me is that they have not touched the Mumps
> >>> code, so I don't know where that part comes from.
> >>> The idea here is to replace the Delphi code behind CPRS with an
> >>> Ajax/Web 2.0 framework.
> >>> At this point, I would say that David Uhlman or some of the Clear
> >>> Health guys will hopefully provide some more details. I think this is
> >>> a very significant development and hope that they continue working on
> >>> it.
> >>> Roger
> >>> On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 10:37 AM, Chris Richardson <r...@rcresearch.us>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>> Roger;
> >>>> That is not what they said. They said " a web-based version of VistA
> >>>> working without MUMPS" and "the strategy is to compile the MUMPS code to
> >>>> C,
> >>>> run it through some extensive processing, and then it becomes available
> >>>> in a
> >>>> fashion that can be called from php." I believe that both GTM and Cache
> >>>> can
> >>>> work with PHP just fine without having to be converted to "C". I would
> >>>> love
> >>>> to see their data model and watch their performance stats. I have a
> >>>> pretty
> >>>> good idea what those will look like. If they wanted to say that they
> >>>> were
> >>>> just replacing CPRS, then they should say so. If they didn't replace
> >>>> CPRS,
> >>>> they could still claim that CPRS runs without MUMPS right now (as long
> >>>> as
> >>>> you don't expect any data to come with it). If I am not mistaken, GT.M
> >>>> is
> >>>> already written in "C" or some other compiler and pretty well optimized
> >>>> for
> >>>> the data handling model. Re-inventing MUMPS in C would be a trick,
> >>>> getting
> >>>> scalability and performance would be a miracle. Say you could (by some
> >>>> miracle), what would you be loosing? Access to the source code (it is
> >>>> all a
> >>>> black box and the end user is kept at arms length from verifying the
> >>>> operation of the code). The user is at the mercy of the vendor once
> >>>> again.
> >>>> Is this a good thing? I don't think so. Where is the good here?
> >>>> Interesting, but is it really necessary? What is wrong with MUMPS?
> >>>> I
> >>>> have heard of such efforts to replace MUMPS for over 20 years. If all
> >>>> of
> >>>> this effort to replace MUMPS was so easy, it would have been done
> >>>> already.
> >>>> It isn't a matter of money, the DoD and the VA have spent gobs of money
> >>>> to
> >>>> replace it. What is keeping them?
> >>>> ----- Original Message -----
> >>>> From: "Roger A. Maduro" <ramad...@gmail.com>
> >>>> To: <Hardhats@googlegroups.com>
> >>>> Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 5:28 AM
> >>>> Subject: [Hardhats] Re: ClearHealth project compiles VistA to MUMPS-LESS
> >>>> web
> >>>> interface.
> >>>>> My understanding is that it is a replacement for CPRS, not VistA. It
> >>>>> should have the same functionality as CPRS but running on a browser. I
> >>>>> don't any of the MUMPS code is changed.
> >>>>> Roger
> >>>>> On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 6:05 AM, Chris Richardson <r...@rcresearch.us>
> >>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>> And does the database scale when there are a bunch of users on?
> >>>>>> ----- Original Message -----
> >>>>>> From: "Nancy Anthracite" <nanthrac...@verizon.net>
> >>>>>> To: <Hardhats@googlegroups.com>
> >>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 8:51 PM
> >>>>>> Subject: [Hardhats] Re: ClearHealth project compiles VistA to
> >>>>>> MUMPS-LESS
> >>>>>> web
> >>>>>> interface.
> >>>>>>> Patching it may be a very interesting exercise.
> >>>>>>> On Wednesday 21 May 2008, Fred Trotter wrote:
> >>>>>>>> Today at TEPR, ClearHealth announced that they have a web-based
> >>>>>>>> version of VistA working without MUMPS.
> >>>>>>>> Apparently the strategy is to compile the MUMPS code to C, run it
> >>>>>>>> through some extensive processing, and then it becomes available in
> >>>>>>>> a
> >>>>>>>> fashion that can be called from php.
> >>>>>>>> They are currently in beta in one hospital with this technology.
> >>>>>>>> I know very little about it so I cannot field questions. For those
> >>>>>>>> who
> >>>>>>>> are very interested, take a look at this post on the ClearHealth
> >>>>>>>> forums:
> >>>>>>>>http://www.clear-health.com/forum/index.php?t=rview&goto=3105#msg_3105
> >>>>>>>> I am sure they might field questions from you on that same forum.
> >>>>>>>> Interesting times :)
> >>>>>>>> -FT
> >>>>>>> --
> >>>>>>> Nancy Anthracite
