Step-by-Step: Migrating Data (needing help)
Well, since my last entry I have been wading through the application and sending questions to the development team. I have been trying to see how our current data will migrate (Advatange Database from other, unnamed practice management system). Using the DB Manager I have exported all the existing tables to .csv files. I'm currently slow going, as with almost no programming experience I have been viewing and modifying the csv files in Open Office spreadsheets, saving back to csv files and then using phpmyadmin to import them. This is a BAD IDEA, not only time consuming, but also very error prone.
My only slight concern is the fact that our current database has fields that we utilize quite often but are not available in FreeMED. After asking develop team, adding fields to satisfy our requirements would be a bad idea and could possibly fork our deployment from FreeMED and that's just not comforting.
I'll add as I know more, but if anyone has experience with formatting csv files and is willing to help, let me know.
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I'm migrating a doctor from Eclipse's export (which is pitifully lacking in details) over to Freemed. I'm doing three INSERTs: into patients, into coverage, and into pnotes (for the SOAP notes). I'm happy to share the program. Send me email: nelson@crynwr.com.
FreeMED doesn't store its data like a lot of other EMR systems, so some massaging of data may be necessary. For example, most insurance coverage data is stored in the 'coverage' table, including the 'guarantor' information which is stored in most systems' main patient table.
I used Perl the last time I had to do a large scale data migration into FreeMED, parsing the CSV files and generating db inserts, which worked pretty well. It pretty much depends which data you're having trouble mapping, and which system you're mapping from. It's a pretty safe bet that someone has attempted a migration from whichever system you're pulling data from, and that would at least give a starting point to work from, instead of doing it all "from scratch".
Jeff Buchbinder
Project Head
FreeMED Software Foundation, Inc
http://freemedsoftware.org/