Don’t get fascinated when I say that OSCAR for hospital. OSCAR here denotes Open Source Clinical Application Resource and not the Oscar concerned with Hollywood. OSCAR is a free open source software product. It is a medical software product. Open Source Software products can be downloaded freely by anyone along with the codes. They can be reviewed and redesigned for further uses. OSCAR the open source medical software comes with General Public License (GPL) which ensures that it is available freely without any cost. General Public license also bestows the rights to people to develop and distribute this medical software. OSCAR was started by the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University in the year 2001. This open source medical software was brought out with the aim of producing the web based EMR support for diverse academic as well as clinical functionaries. Since its inception in 2001 it has covered many small and big cities worldwide and the user base is growing day by day. Along with this other supportive services dealing with OSCAR have also came into the scene. Support companies with services like server installation, maintenance, user training and support have grown with the growth of OSCAR use. The user base of OSCAR as of May 2009 has reached a level of 700 – 800 users in places like BC, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and PEI. Ontario and BC tops the list with highest number of users. This open source medical software has experienced a tremendous growth percentage of 75% in installations in the year 2008 than the previous year. It is able to maintain a same pace in 2009 also. This web based EMR product, being an open source software product, is acclaimed widely.
A standard based approach was taken in Ontario to select the web based EMR and OSCAR has proved to be better in all of them. These tests were done with the latest and strict specifications from CMS namely CMS v3.0 specification. OSCAR can be run on ASP as well as non –ASP also. In BC the implementation and the development of OSCAR is being managed by the BC OSCAR User Group. The users and the support companies form the OSCAR community and they meet to discuss on OSCAR issues at regular intervals. And the OSCAR Canada user community is the main body concerned with the community development of this web based EMR product. Currently, the updating of OSCAR is done twice a year in the months of April and October. The updating of OSCAR and other upcoming events of OSCAR are aired for the community through the Roadmap Page on the OSCAR Canada website. There are some big contributors to the project OSCAR and they are: large institutions like McMaster University, McGill, City of Toronto, OSCAR support companies, user groups and independent clinics and users.
OSCAR is one of the finest web based EMR software in the category of open source software products. It has excellent Chronic Disease Management Flow Sheets for the disease like Diabetes, Hypertension, CHF, COPD, asthma, HIV and INR. OSCAR is also equipped with Chronic Disease Management audit tools. The Chronic Disease Management Flowcharts come with added features like the customization per patient. These charts and sheets help in improved tracking of patient wise customized care. This web based EMR software also contains maternity forms, reports and audit tools, preventive care and immunization modules, enhanced prescribing, and many other up-to-date features.
