South African Users?

Submitted by Guest on Tue, 05/08/2014 - 05:50

General User's Discussion

We have recently taken over a very small clinic (in the Southern Cape of South Africa) which is still on paper clinical notes, and we are very keen to move to a computerised, preferably cloud-based system. I haven't explored too much but am a big fan of open source programs, so very interested in what OpenVPMS can do. I'm very interested to know if there are any other South African vets out there using this and if so whether it manages our VAT ok (I presume it would be a basic setting as to what percentage VAT is used in the country?) and whether it incorporates the use of other currencies...?

Also, presuming the above are not issues, how suitable the software is to a very small one and a half vet practice, any comments or advice would be really appreciated.

Regards,

Daryl

Re: South African Users?

Submitted by tgething (not verified) on Tue, 05/08/2014 - 06:38.

Daryl - see http://www.openvpms.org/forum/users-southern-africa-and-namibia

Regards, Tim G

Re: South African Users?

Submitted by Ben_Charlton on Tue, 05/08/2014 - 10:28.

I too like the idea of Cloud based computing - the reduncy you can get built in etc. However you need to assess the reliability of the net, both that between yourself and the internet and the location of the cloud based servers you chose to use.

I would always advise you maintain local backup and even a small pc to run it locally in the case of complete internet disaster.

I currently have an EC2 instance setup to run open using google cloud printing to print back to the local network. It worked ok, but i feel the printing setup could do with a tweak or 2.

Keep in mind the system openvpms is installed on acts as a print server, so it needs to have CUPS / Windows print server access to the local printers.

Regards

Ben

OpenVPMS Installer and Helper

Ph: +61423044823

Email: info[at]charltonit.com[dot]au

Re: South African Users?

Submitted by DarylHunt (not verified) on Fri, 29/08/2014 - 08:45.

Hi Ben,

Appreciate your feedback, I'm very keen to try out OpenVPMS, as we are desperate to get onto a computer system from paper notes. But unfortunately I am also not the most computer literate person. I can do most basic stuff, but worried that I might not be up to doing what's required to get this up and running at the clinic. At the moment, we have a PC laptop that runs a very basic accounting package (only just manages to do what it needs to) and everything else is manual. We have 2 personal mac laptops between us which we would not be averse to using for work, as we have them with us anyway.

My main question is whether that would be a feasible set up, and although my original question was about a cloud-based system, we do in fact have quite erratic internet connection, so am now thinking that a local network might be safer and at least more predictable. Do you know if one could run it on Macs and PC's concurrently, speaking to one another? I have seen some comments about creating a virtual machine to run it on a Mac, something I've never done, but is that necessary?

And finally, as one who would probably need to read OpenVPMS for Idiots, how would I go about getting started with this, if we as a practice decide to take the leap?

Really appreciate your help,

Regards,

Daryl

Re: South African Users?

Submitted by tanderson on Tue, 02/09/2014 - 11:30.

You need to deploy OpenVPMS on a single machine; each user will then connect to this through their browser.

There's plenty of information on the site regarding installing and using OpenVPMS, and the forums are a great resource. If you want to get up and running quickly however, I would suggest talking to an implementer.

Regards,

-Tim