Open Dental Software - Are there any Dentist on Gentoo forum

Joseph_sys

Are there any Dentists on Gentoo forum?

There is an excellent GPL "Open Dental Software" http://www.open-dent.com/ that would make a nice addition to Gentoo portage, the only problem is, it is written in .NET framework (Mono in Linux). I don't know how hard it would be to port it to Linux Mono.

If anybody is interested pls. drop me a line, it might be easier to do it as a group.

JPMRaptor · Guru Joined: 04 Oct 2002 Posts: 410 Location: Maryland

Looking at the mono home page it looks like they're still working on the Windows Forms portion of .net. Since open dent looks like it's got a pretty extensive GUI I'd guess they make pretty heavy use of Windows Forms. Other than that there theoretically shouldn't be any problem getting it to work under Mono instead of MS.net.
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motosauro

Kollin · Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2007 9:06 am Post subject:

http://opendental.carlier-online.be/source.html

:mrgreen:

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motosauro · Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2007 10:11 am Post subject:

Joseph_sys · Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 4:11 am Post subject:

motosauro · Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 12:15 pm Post subject:

Joseph_sys · Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 7:10 pm Post subject:

I am not a programmer but if there is something I can do to help, testing etc. just let me know.
Tell me more bout your project, yourself, how will you license it? Are you a dentist?
Will it be capable of submitting the forms to insurance companies over Internet/modem ?

I'm not a dentist but my wife is and I'm trying to help her to move her over to Linux platform, but the main issue for her is the dental software.

Joseph_sys · Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 7:11 pm Post subject:

I am not a programmer but if there is something I can do to help, testing etc. just let me know.
Tell me more bout your project, yourself, how will you license it? Are you a dentist?
Will it be capable of submitting the forms to insurance companies over Internet/modem ?

I'm not a dentist but my wife is and I'm trying to help her to move her over to Linux platform, but the main issue for her is the dental software.

motosauro · Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 11:15 am Post subject:

Joseph_sys · Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 6:20 pm Post subject:

OK, starting from the top. First, I think the most important would be to create the project on the SourceForge.net to attract other programmers or testers. Some might even sponsor you if they will see any progress.
In a similar way, they made GNUDental page but going through the GNUDental web-page one have an impression that their goal is a vendetta against Dr. Spark's OpenDental and that is a mistake I think. Dr. Spark did a great job with his project but I don't support his platform choice.

Yes, security is very, very important, so installing as root and running as user only and over the network as well. I wonder if there is a way to protect the data base against tampering even from root.

If you don't have any dental background, I think a good idea would be to look at how Dr. Spark laid out his software, he is a dentist so he did it in the best way possible from his dentist point of view and I think we can rely on his logic.

I've ordered from CDAnet (CDAnet http://www.cda-adc.ca . CDA is a Body in Canada that tests Dental Softwares and puts their stamp of approval, without their stamp Dentists in Canada can not use such software).
CDAnet Message Formats and Standards once I get it I'll send you a copy, it will allow you to design and test dental claims through their test center.

2.) If you are designing it from scratch, it would be a good idea to add "hooks" to the software to use it with Asterisk (Open PBX system). It shouldn't be difficult. The basic principle is that when the receptionist will pull a patient's chart she'll just click on the phone icon; asterisk calls the patient and once the patient's phone rings the asterisk rings the receptionist's line (this will save them a lot of time). I think there is such function in Asterisk or script on the Asterisk Wiki page, I would have to look for it.
I think Dr. Spark is trying to incorporate Asterisk function in his software as well.

3.) The last part I thing would be to have an ebuild to install it on Gentoo.

P.s. Your English is very good.

Joseph_sys

motosauro · Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 9:06 am Post subject:

Oh, that's nice

Having someone pointing me in some direction is very good and time saving

I peeked into SQl-ledger and LedgerSMB (just the about page

) and I think they can be good pieces of software, but I'm too ignoratn about billing problems (apart from having to pay them

) so I cannot say wether it could be better to have to install something written in a different language than the main app, using a different RDBMS (actually imposing one) and a database structure I don't know, opposed to writing it from scratch.

Of course I'm planning to see how the other similar apps do their work, looking at the code, and I will surely grab a hint or two from each one, but my real goal is to write something similar to UML: so well laid out that writing it all in any language should be a piece of cake

In order to do that the main problem is to have very clear in mind what the app should do.
Nevertheless I still say that I'm less than a novice in many of the areas such as billing, accounting and such, so it might really be better to use a side app.

As for CDA, that's exactly what I needed: a solid hint for features to be added and some serious specifications. That's the spirit, thank you

As for Asterisk, I simply know it exists, but since it gets used more and more widely, I concurr that planning some integration with it is very advisable. Being it OpenSource too I think it shouldn't be that difficult (I don't know anything about it though, but I'll look into it).
As for the Ebuild it shouldn't be a problem, since I'm planning a self contained app, which will need just a working installation of MySQL (or a different RDBMS, but right now I'm working on that) which will have to be installed separately (or by portage) since their license prevents me from distributing it along with my app.
As for SourceForge, I've opened an account, but since I still didn't decide about a name for the project I didn't submit it to them. I'm planning to do it when I will have at least a working alpha version (should be by the end of spring at maximum, hopefully by the end of winter)

P.S.
I'm writing the app as a standalone gui, essentially providing a structured frontend for a database, but I'm not plannign for this to be the only way. I'm trying to keep business logic separated from presentation as much as possible so that it will be possible to swap my superFunkyCool SWT gui for a superDiscoUltraCool JSF page served by Tomcat, or a mediumCoolAlmostCrappy php page served by apache

I just think writing it in Java+SWT suits better two needs: security and making my coding skill stand out (it's so little, poor me

)

P.P.S.
I think that preventing a Database from being tampered even from root on localhost is both almost impossible and meaningless: if you're worried this much about data (and that's good btw) you'd better keep servers in a bunker behind a blast door (as well as root password of course). Nevertheless I'm planning on suggesting the removal of the database's root user (or at least to prevent it from connecting remotely) as a security measure.
Database's root user can be substituted by a normal user created by the "GRANT ALL ON *.* to user@%", so that attackers will have to guess both username AND password.
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Joseph_sys · Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 6:39 pm Post subject:

I think it would be a good idea if you join the LedgerSMB mailing list and ask the developers to give you a helping hand/directions. They are very friendly and are willing to help.
It shouldn't be that hard to exchange information between LedgerSMB (accounting package that is using Postgresql ) and your program using MySQL. All you will be linking is just a name between them via a record number etc.

Currently my we are using Dental Software where they enter information including billing and it has to be transfer manually on a daily basis into accounting package like LedgerSMB so income and expenses balance. That is double amount of work for a dentist. So having it done correctly from the scratch will save you a lot of time and the dentist.
Besides LedgerSMB is double entry accounting package (multilingual, and very flexible so I suggest you take advantage of it).

As to Asterisk, we run Asterisk PBX and I can give you helping hand. It is very easy to run and install. Most Dental Offices are just small offices and they have only two or three incoming lines. So having two Sipura-3000 units will work perfectly in almost any office.

As to security, what I had in mind is the situation where there is a legal action taken by a customer against a dentist.
On a day to day basis dentists keep their notes by handwriting them on some cards signing the dating. From a court point of view anything that is singed and dated represents a legal document.
Now, if a dentist will use only software to keep the notes about the treatment; is it a legal document?
In case of legal action against dentist how will he proved the record wasn't tampered with? The date can be altered, there is no signature. Maybe digital signature like using GPG/PGP would be acceptable in a court of law as evidence that record wasn't tampered with. An example after making a note about the treatment the dentist digitally signs it. This is just an idea.
Lets wait for the information from CDAnet so we will have an idea what they are looking for.

motosauro · Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 7:59 pm Post subject:

Joseph_sys · Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 8:11 pm Post subject:

motosauro · Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 9:21 pm Post subject:

Joseph_sys · Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 10:01 pm Post subject:

What are you programing if I may ask?

I was looking more closely into OpenDental and the problems they have. It seems to me that the whole project was designed from the scratch to fail.
1.) The e-claims are not possible to incorporate as a module, because everything is programed as one module. In other words if you are in Italy and I'm in Canada you would install Canadian Dental E-Claims if they were finished (waist of disk space and unnecessary complexity); but after exchanging few messages it seems to me the Canadian E-claims will never be done.
2.) Build in accounting program, another unnecessary complexity. I don't know how good is their accounting program but I would assume it does just the basic and is not ready for international use (dealing with international taxes etc)

So, when you will be thinking about it, design certain parts that are relevant to particular countries only as a module, eg. E-Claims etc.
As to accounting I think it is be better to utilize ready programs like: LedgerSMB http://www.ledgersmb.org/ or other program that are ready to use and have good international setup.

motosauro · Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 10:26 am Post subject:

I concurr:
Accountig software is the last part I'm thinking of.
In what I design everything starts from a solid database structure, modular and with tight security (user-level grants).
After that it's almost just a matter of presenting data in a convenient way (convenient for the actual user).
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