Medical Manager
From MirrorMed
Contents |
Medical Manager History
To find out about Medical Manager, and why it is so important visit Medical Manager History.
Free and Open Source Medical Manager Solutions
This wiki specifically exists to support those who are interested in using Open Source software to address some of Medical Managers weaknesses. There are lots of good reasons to use Medical Manager. It is a very fast and capable system. However it is approaching abandon-ware status.
Free does not necessarily mean costless. The "Free" in Free and Open Source refers to Freedom, not price. All of the programs below respect your freedom, not all of them are costless.
Using Putty to access Medical Manager
Medical Manager is a terminal based program. It was originally designed around a *nix based system with multiple terminals connected via serial cables. If you use Medical Manager with special monitors that do nothing else, you probably are still using this model. However the telnet and ssh protocols are designed to provide terminal access over TCP/IP, which means that you can use standard computers accessing a Medical Manager server over a standard network. Instead of having an entire monitor as a terminal you use just one program on a computer that can be used for other purposes. If you access Medical Manager from a Windows machine then you are using terminal software. Using terminal software means that your computer is useful for other things besides Medical Manager, so this is the preferred way to use Medical Manager.
Putty is a powerful terminal software package that runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. [Patrick E. Bennett http://www.pebcomputing.com/] contributed a guide to Using Putty as a MM client. By using this software you can save potentially thousands of dollars in licensing fees that you might normally have to pay for a terminal software program.
Installing OpenSSH on SCO
Medical Manager is usually found on SCO servers, although the newest versions support Linux and older versions ran on AIX and even Windows. SCO has essentially halted development on its operating system which poses as substantial problem for Medical Manager users. Part of that problem is the issue of finding old hardware that old versions of SCO still support. Another problem is finding ways to install modern software on this aging operating system. Here is a good source of information on the [History of SCO http://williambader.com/museum/dell/xenixhistory.html]
One of the most valuable new software packages available is [OpenSSH http://www.openssh.com/]. OpenSSH is a FOSS implementation of SSH, which stands for "secure shell". Telnet comes with SCO by default. Like telnet, SSH allows terminal access to your SCO server over a TCP/IP network, but unlike telnet it does this in a secure fashion.
Here is a guide for installing OpenSSH on SCO.
MM2MM link Medical Manager and MirrorMed
This project is aimed at MirrorMed which is intended to be a compelling Medical Manager replacement, that is available under the GPL. Our efforts are called mm2mm which stands for Medical Manager to MirrorMed. Using mm2mm you can do three things.
- Replace Medical Manager entirely and use MirrorMed as an EHR and PM
- Archive and Report on your Medical Manager data using SQL tools
- Continue using Medical Manager as your PM and use MirrorMed as your EHR
MM2MM is sold by SynSeer. It is available exclusively under the GPL. It is not available for costless download from SynSeer. That does not mean you have to use SynSeer for your Medical Manager support if you want to use MM2MM. Your current Medical Manager vendor can purchase MM2MM from SynSeer and provide the software to you.
Third Party Medical Manager Support
Sage, the current owner of the Medical Manager copyright, does not appear to be doing a better job at supporting Medical Manager than their predecessors. Since this poor support has been going on for some time, there are many good third party support groups available. Many of the companies that now support Medical Manager were at one time Medical Manager franchisee owners.
Third-Party Medical Manager Support
note: EHR stands for Electronic Health Record and PM stands for Medical Practice Management system "Medical Manager" is a trademark owned by Sage, and "MirrorMed", "MM2MM" and "FreeB" are trademarks owned by SynSeer.
