[AccessD] Dental Software

 Hi Jim --

Thank you for your comments.
That Open Dental software they say is currently used by 4000 dental offices - so not all should be that bad in "standardization" of dental offices' everyday workflows/operations.
I'm thinking about business opportunity here - this software is evolving as an open source project

http://www.opendental.com/manual/versions.html

and if this software is really working so good as announced then its adaptation for a certain dental office workflow/operations shouldn't be that much work - I mean it should be affordable for dental offices.

Going with Mac or Linux front-end version - no need now I suppose - as this software is written using C# and MySQL and it will run well on modern MS Windows PCs/Windows RT Prof tablets without any additional Windows server software license costs - with backend MySQL db running on Linux server. And this software has also a web interface, which, they say, is working well on iPhone and Android smart-phones and I guess on iPad tablets also.

And they have ambitious goals ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Dental ):

<<<
The project wants "this software to become the world standard dental software. We want to make it easy to access and share data. We are tired of the restrictive policies of the current dental software companies. We want the user to always have total control, not the software company. And most of all, we want software that just works well”.
There are about 4,000 offices using OD, and an estimated 10,000,000 patient records.
Dr. Jordan Sparks has done most of the initial programming. They have a team of additional programmers employed these days. >>>

Are that goals looking too ambitious?


-- Shamil


Wednesday, June 19, 2013 9:25 AM -07:00 from "Jim Lawrence" <accessd at shaw.ca>:
>Well, you will have to do some investigation but as the package is Open GL,
>you can just download and run it.
>
>Many Dentists around here have had their own proprietary packages written
>for particular aspects or their business, like scheduling/accounting or have
>software (also proprietary) that accompanies their special equipment; 3D
>tooth modeling, real-time X-Ray imagining and so on. 
>
>Aside: Many years ago the company that I was working for, at the time, did
>some presentations to the local dentists to find out if we could help
>them...it was decided at the last minute that the company would not pursue
>development along that line. 
>
>IOW there seems to be no standardization amongst the dental community, here.
>
>
>The OpenDental package and list of features looks really good. To really
>make this package grow it will have to add Apple support at the very least
>(most dental offices I have seen use Macs extensively) and Linux also as
>well as Windows (a real mixed bag). 
>
>Looking at what the application is developed in, converting should not be a
>big stretch. Mono and MySQL(MariaDB) runs on all platforms. 
>
>Jim
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From:  accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
>[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Salakhetdinov
>Shamil
>Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2013 6:17 AM
>To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
>Subject: [AccessD] Dental Software
>
> Hi All --
>
>Does anybody here have good working experience in development of Dental
>Software -   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_software  ?
>
>From the above link I have found open source Open Dental (
>http://www.opendental.com/index.html ) software package. It's written using
>C# and it works with mySQL database backend but AFAIS from the sources it
>can be adapted to work with MS Access or MS SQL backend if needed.
>
>My question is does anybody know how well this Open Dental (or some other
>open source) software is adapted for the needs of dentists small clinics?
>How user-friendly it's? How well it works with different kinds of imaging
>hardware as X-ray systems etc?
>

-- 
Салахетдинов Шамиль