I want OSCAR - what now?

I was very excited to finally make a decision on an office EMR.  The idea of having a system that was essentially "free" and a system that was never going to be obsolete is perfect!  I KNEW I had to have it.

My software costs of implementing a $2500 per month EMR (average total cost) over the next 20 years would have been $600,000.00!  OSCAR will cost me $0.00 (though it'll probably cost me something to get billings and Labs going for Alberta for it).

So - I started with the initial advice of a fellow Physician named Jel from B.C.; who suggested that if I didn't get OSCAR, that I'd be a "lollygaggling, closed-minded, knobbleheaded, nit".  

Jel is British and I believe that in the language of his people, that this extemporaneousness in his native tongue, loosely translated as "silly".  I "Googled" OSCAR, and came up with all kinds of things that ranged from a certain way to prepare Scallops to edible thong underwear.

This approach was less helpful than I had hoped, and I inquired with Jel as to where to go for more information.

So Jel pointed me in the right direction and told me about the "OSCAR CANADA USER's SOCIETY" and that this website should answer all of my questions.

The problem was that the website appeared to contain some incomplete links, and it also appeared to be geared to folks that already KNOW all about OSCAR and what it was all about.  There were lots of URL's and acronyms that stood for arcane things that weren't explained or easy for this uninitiated neophyte to understand.

So - I did the only thing that a highly trained Physician and Scientist could do.....I bitched to Jel.

He then turned me on to the BC OSCAR Society email user's group (oscarmcmaster-bc-users@lists.sourceforge.net).  This group contains a bunch of experts and simple users that email each other daily about their inspirations and insights regarding OSCAR.

These folks were immediately welcoming, friendly and very helpful.  They occasionally communicate in some sort of high arcane language more akin to something one would expect from an intergalactic Star Trek Vulcan species rather than the cave-dwelling, crotch scratching slightly evolved ape species with which I seem to have more in common.

But I learned that I have to have a "server" in order to run OSCAR.  And the "server" had to have Linux on it.  And the "server" had to have a particular version of Linux on it, called "Ubuntu".

So I went to Chapters and bought a book on Linux Ubuntu as well as another one on Java.  Both were 800 pages, and I'm about halfway through both of them.

So, I looked high and low and ended up going to a computer store to build and configure my server.  I then happily downloaded "Ubuntu" (the 64 bit server version), and installed it on my "high-end" server.  

Then I watched my server crash.  And crash again.  And again.  And again.  I could run Ubuntu easily from the disk, but apparently you can't install Ubuntu on anything that has a RAID array.

So I went back to the computer store and preached my woes - and they scratched their head and said sorry and offered me a full refund - which I took.

I then fumed about how in the world I would get an "OSCAR SERVER with UBUNTU already running on it".  I knew that I could order one "ready to go" from the OSCAR CANADA USERS SOCIETY, but I wanted to purchase locally in case I had hardware issues that needed immediate repair.

So, a week rolled by while I mulled my options - and I did what only a highly educated Physician and scientist could reasonably do under the circumstanced - I bitched about it to my nurse during a surgery.

I happened to be dissecting a painful mass from a sensory nerve in the back of this poor fellow, while bitching to my alway sympathetic nurse (at least she looked sympathetic - I suspect that she was actually listening to her ipod).

The fellow I was operating on listened with a great deal of sympathy - and as it turned out, he happened to be a bona fide computer/networking professional that had heard of Linux and Ubuntu and even OSCAR!

So at last I had someone local that could supply and configure my hardware!  He is going to build me exactly identical servers that will mirror each other redundantly, and run "mirrored" simultaneously while saving Data externally on a RAID that will also be backed up on a tape drive.

He builds IBM systems, and that company appears to have a "business level" support system and build quality that defines the industry standard.

So now I sit and wait and plot the next step.....