One of the strengths of an online community is its collective knowledge — the collaboration and innovation of many that can accomplish far more than any one individual or organization. It’s an open-source culture that has expanded way beyond the software community.
At a conference in Kansas City last week, fusion-physicist-turned-farmer Marcin Jakubowski told about Open Source Ecology, a network of farmers, engineers and supporters designing and posting do-it-yourself schematics for what they see as the world’s 50 most important machines. At a 30-acre site in northwest Missouri, workers have prototyped the first eight modular machines in this collaborative Global Village Construction Set. They envision their designs being used to “lower the barriers for entry into farming, building and manufacturing” around the globe. Another conference speaker, crisis mapper Patrick Meier, talked about the open-source Ushahidi mapping software and legion of worldwide volunteers that have helped governments and the United Nations pinpoint particular people and areas devastated in such recent and ongoing crisis areas as Haiti, Libya and Somalia.
Our humble blog can’t boast such expansive life-saving work, but we’re glad to be a part of an online community working together to improve the world of healthcare IT (which actually can save lives). For the past several years, we’ve addressed many of your concerns with our practical advice for maintaining and troubleshooting your complex Cerner Millennium® EMR system. We’ve even compiled a number of these into in-depth papers on such topics as message log monitoring, tips for remote-hosted organizations and steps to minimize risks during upgrades. These and more are available on our website.
To help us continue to cover the issues affecting your organization, we’d love to hear from you. Where specifically are your pain points with your EMR? In what internal or external areas do you need more understanding? What creative solutions has your IT team found? We will endeavor to address whatever ideas you suggest.
Just click the Comment link below to get the conversation started.
