Ecosystem
Open-source Health IT community
How the Medsphere-sponsored Ecosystem drives OpenVista development
Medsphere actively nurtures the Healthcare Open Source Ecosystem, a global community of customers, partners, developers and other online collaborators who drive OpenVista innovation, and provide a parallel development and support structure. This independent Ecosystem lives, breathes, works, multiplies, thrives, at Medsphere.org, a community gathering place where healthcare administrators, clinicians, developers and enthusiasts can interact, share, and collaborate in the largest ecosystem in healthcare.
What customers say
County Hospital: Kern Medical Center
"The Ecosystem is one of the things that really has excited our employees," says Paul Hensler, CEO of Kern Medical Center in Bakersfield, Calif. "We’re a standalone hospital in Bakersfield, California. We don’t have any other hospitals in our system, or people we routinely talk to, other than our medical school affiliations with UCLA. To be part of a system spread throughout the country, to be able to talk with these people nationally and pick some of the best brains across the country, and then to be able to customize our applications, or borrow applications, or create our own and share them with others, really adds a whole dimension. It makes you feel you’re part of the electronic medical records system you’re using, rather than something that was taken out of a box and plugged in."
Psychiatric Hospital: Silver Hill Hospital
“Medsphere is different,” says Sigurd Ackerman, MD, president and medical director of Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Conn. “Their Ecosystem works the way
medicine should work—continuous collaboration to share new technologies and best
practices. We immediately started helping to develop the clinical applications
and templates we need. Now we encourage other institutions, private or public,
to join us as we continue to improve the mental health field.”
(Even before their OpenVista go-live, Silver Hill staffers were sharing the products they had designed via an Ecosystem work group. Their treatment protocol contributions include psychosocial assessments; a suicide assessment scale, CAGE questionnaire (the name is an acronym for four standard alcoholism screening questions) and mental status assessment; nursing assessments with detailed substance and psychiatric history components; and diagnosis-specific treatment plans)
Select community content
OpenVista Collaborative Product Roadmap: On the road to 'meaningful use'
Click here to learn about the OpenVista Ecosystem collaborative product roadmap and get started on making your contribution today!
Community 1.01
Browse and tour
Click here to browse our many Communities.
Click here to take a quick tour and find your niche as a ...
- Administrator
- Clinician (Physicians, Nurses and more)
- (Software) Developer (Hardhat)
- Enthusiast
Contribute, build your Ecosystem brand
There are many ways to contribute to the Ecosystem and build your reputation as a (health IT, clinical, open source EHR or other healthcare) expert. One way is to answer questions in your field of expertise. When the person who asked the question marks your answer as "helpful" or "correct," your "Community Rep" gets an instant boost. You can contribute in other ways, too—for instance, create documents, publish blog posts and complete tasks.
The Ecosystem values your contribution using a simple point system:
- Create a document: 4
- Publish a blog post: 3
- Complete a task in a project: 1
- Post or reply to a discussion: 1
- Answer a question correctly: 4
- Answer a question helpfully: 2
Blog away
To learn more about open source EHR and the Ecosystem, and get your blogging feet wet, you may want to follow others. We suggest you start with the "In the News" blog then branch out to others that pique your interest.
To start, click here, take a look and see if it's of interest, then go to “ACTIONS” button in top right corner and select "Watch this Blog." It's that easy.
You can "unsubscribe" of course at any time, just by clicking "Stop Watching this Blog."
Enjoy.
Community calls
The Ecosystem sponsors Community Calls to enable healthcare and health IT professionals, clinicians, administrators and enthusiasts to communicate and Collaborate. Click on Community Calls: The Ecosystem Advantage to learn more.