Which EMR System? (Part Five)
I mentioned Fred Trotter previously, because he's all over the Open Source world in regard to EMR and PM solutions. His comments can be found in the forums of most of the Open Source software we reviwed, and his resume shows that he worked on the FreeB, FreeMED, and ClearHealth software projects. He recently appeared to "fork" the ClearHealth platform into his own project, MirrorMED.However, MirrorMED's first forum post was in December of 2005, which would have been while he was still employed by Uversa (his resume was last updated in Feb, 2006, and shows him to be employed by Uversa, the developers of ClearHealth, through at least February of 2006). As such, we're not really sure if MirrorMED is a fork by Fred for his company's purpose (SynSeer), or if it's a fork by Uversa for marketing purposes.
More confusing than Fred's involvement with ClearHealth / MirrorMED is the PhoenixPM project, and the difference between it and the PhoenixEMR project. I'm not sure if they are similar projects, or if they just chose bad names. Developers from Uversa appear / claim to be involved with the PhoenixPM project, and PhoenixEMR is based off of the OpenEMR code base. I haven't been able to get a straight answer out of anyone about which is which.
2 Comments:
Anthony,
I think you know everything I am about to write, but I wanted to clear up your questions for your readers.
I resigned from Uversa before starting MirrorMed. MirrorMed is my vehicle for offering services around the same codebase I was working on at Uversa. There is almost no difference between MirrorMed and ClearHealth in terms of code. Those small differences are generally to address SynSeer's (my companies) specific needs. When I think they have a chance of being accepted I always post patches back to the ClearHealth project. The reason I started the MirrorMed project is mostly due to Trademark issues. Technically only Uversa, or people Uversa approves can use the term ClearHealthto market a product. For that matter only SynSeer or people who SynSeer approves can install "MirrorMed". Trademark is the only way to differentiate services in the FOSS world, and to defend a trademark you have to ensure the quality of services rendered under that trademark (IANAL, but that is my understanding).
A good example of what can go wrong with Trademark is the FreeMED Trademark problem. Essentially since it is undefended, anyone can offer "FreeMED" services.
Historically ClearHealth (and by proxy MirrorMed) were forks of OpenEMR. However, even in the initial fork most of the code was re-written. At this point, I would be hard pressed to find any OpenEMR code in either MirrorMed or ClearHealth.
Uversa won the PhoenixPM bid with the ClearHealth project, so I suppose you could say that PhoenixPM is ClearHealth. PhoenixPM was a project to install FOSS medical software in several clinics in Northern California.
I have never heard of PhoenixEMR and as far as I know there is no connection between MirrorMed, ClearHealth or PhoenixPM with that project.
Hope this clarifies things!
Fred Trotter
Fred,
Thanks for the clarifications ... they always help. You are right, the FreeMED debacle is certainly something to try and stay away from.
However, your statement: "Technically only Uversa, or people Uversa approves can use the term ClearHealth to market a product." is quite interesting. I would assume that this "marketing of a product" is similar to RedHat's products, which are also GPL licensed, and whereby only RedHat can claim to have RedHat products.
Of course, this doesn't stop others from saying that they support, or install RedHat, and they don't need RedHat's approval (see Oracle's recent attempts for an example of that). Perhaps I'm mistaken .... and RedHat simply does not enforce their trademark?
Your other clarifications go a long way to explain PhoenixPM, and the OpenEMR split. Thanks very much!
Post a Comment
<< Home