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Topic starter
Is there a current solution available for staff & providers to communicate over instant messaging with centricity access/integration? or any on the horizon?
Secondly, If not, are most people just using Office 365? VoIP IM solutions?
Scenario: If front office wants to ask a nurse about a patient, possibly of adding a link to said chart in that instant message.
Posted : May 26, 2016 4:37 am
Good question.
IMHO, third party hosted systems cannot be trusted with PHI/PII unless you have a signed BA with the third party organization. Even then I have a hard time putting enough trust in them to ensure the data is not stored and remains secure.
Posted : May 26, 2016 4:48 am
Topic starter
Absolutely, that is why I'm looking for one that could be in house, secured, and possibly able to interact with centricity. I know some EMR systems do have these capabilities.
Update : I do know Centricity has messaging within it, but I'm looking more for an "instant" or "conversational" application, with similar interfaces such as skype, etc.
Posted : May 26, 2016 5:33 am
I have a friend at a practice that has an in house chat system consisting of Spark client and Openfire server. Openfire runs on an old PC and does not require much horsepower.. Authentication for clients are done by Active Directory.
Does not integrate with CPS, but it work well for them.
Posted : May 26, 2016 5:34 am
Also it is open source so all it costs is your time and a server to run Openfire on.
Posted : May 26, 2016 5:38 am
Topic starter
Thank you sir! I will be looking into spark. Great info.
Posted : May 26, 2016 5:41 am
I have been running OpenFire as a private instant messaging service behind our firewall for over 10 years in our practice. It requires an instant messaging client that supports XMPP (a.k.a. jabber protocol) and we are using an open source application named Spark (although there are others that will work with this platform). All of our nurses and staff use it on a regular basis. I have explored multiple solutions over the years and have yet to find one that beats it. Here is what is so awesome about OpenFire.
- It is secure. You can run the server and clients on your LAN behind your firewall so no communications can ever get outside of your network.
- It shows presence information so you can tell if the person is at their desk and using their computer.
- If the user is not available, you can still send the other user an offline message that they will receive the next time they logon to their computer.
- It is open source so there are no software licensing fees to pay.
- It is super easy to maintain and uses minimal resources.
- It maintains a history of all chat sessions on the server so an administrator can always go back and review the communications that transpired between staff members.
- The Spark client requires minimal overhead, launches quickly, and is easy to use (intuitive and not bloated like a lot of other IM clients)
We have Office 365 so I wanted to look at Skype (which is provided in our subscription) as an alternative and manage our intra-office communications under one platform, but you simply can't beat the security and ease of use of Openfire/Spark. New employees learn how to use it in about 2 minutes. I literally get dirty looks from our nurses when I joke about getting rid of it. The nurses and front desk staff depend on Spark as much as food and water.
Out of all the systems we use in our environment, I can honestly say that Openfire/Spark is off the charts when you look at the value it delivers for the total cost of ownership (i.e. just the labor to maintain it).
Here is a link to their site:
Posted : May 26, 2016 9:33 am
We also use Openfire/Spark at our practice and it works well for everything we use it for. (it is only used in IT and Radiology at our Clinic)
Posted : May 31, 2016 7:49 am
Topic starter
Thank you sir. I'm almost ready to deploy it. I did spend a lot of time setting up SSO and a way to distribute settings to all of the users. The forums on the site are unbelievably useful in getting this accomplished.
Posted : May 31, 2016 8:46 am
any reason why you would need to use IM over email or phone? I feel as though our lines of communication are pretty complete between email and phone, so I am trying to figure out what advantage adding IM would be. Can this be added as a phone app as well?
Posted : June 2, 2016 10:48 am
Scott, I think the understanding is that is easier to get ahold of people especially when some are on the phone. I personally would see some use to it but there are always downsides.
Posted : June 2, 2016 2:49 pm
Topic starter
We use an old Nortel phone system at this time, We are converting over to VoIP in a year with a new building project. The VoIP system does have integrated IM capability. Email is web based at this time, so a bit inconvenient for simple communication needs.
IM is just another tool in a communication set, it allows informal and quick communication, its easy and feels like real time text conversation. if phone and email were sufficient communication tools, why has text messaging become so heavily used amongst all?
I've implemented openfire/spark, It auto starts when logging in, and logs in using AD Integration and SSO. I've created a AD Security group including all of the employees, So everyone has all the contacts necessary, they just click on a name and start messaging. It allows offline messaging as well. Conversations can be logged and audited for upper management. It is running on a local server so messages stay securely within the network of the business.
It is getting huge praise among all of our employees across the business, even the skeptics.
“640K ought to be enough for anybody.”
Posted : June 3, 2016 5:04 am
