Tkfp--Open Source (No Cost) EMR Alternative

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Those on the familypracticeimprovement1 forum for some time have

probably seen posts from Caldwell about the open source EMR he

programmed/developed called Tkfp. He and 3 other family practice

docs use it for documentation, communication/faxing, accounting,

scheduling and all the functions you would expect for a mature EMR.

Others of us have been using Tkfp and helping to improve it. It runs

on Linux and Windows. Although some functions don't work on Windows,

most of it does now.

Tkfp has a lot of disease templates that we have all contributed to,

many of which, in my opinion, are of pretty good quality. There are

a large number of ICDM codes, including V and E codes, and a pretty

impressive list of stuff that a family doc would want.

We recently adapted Tkfp to run on a popular version of Linux called

Puppy Linux. To try/use Tkfp Puppy Linux, you don't have to install

anything on your computer, other than copy a file called " pup001 " to

your hard drive. This can be on a Windows or Linux system. Then,

you boot the machine with the Puppy Linux live CD (which is very good

at autodetecting your hardware), and it will find the pup001 file.

The pup001 file contains Tkfp, all the extra programs to make it run,

and an entire Linux file system so you can store your files and

changes in it. Puppy Linux is very Windows-like, and is pretty easy

to figure out, even if you never used Linux before. You will need to

download Puppy Linux ver 1.0.8 and burn it to a CD to use Tkfp Puppy

Linux. The iso file for Puppy Linux is about 70 megs in size -- not

too bad on broadband. You have to get pup001 as a zip file, about

300 megs in size - see dowload site below.

Once you boot your system with the Puppy Linux CD, you will notice a

launch icon for Tkfp on the desktop. When you click it (most main

actions in Puppy Linux only require a single left click), all of the

Tkfp applets launch in a notebook. This can take a minute or more,

depending on your system. When the login screen comes up, login as

Caldwell using the default password, already entered for you.

made some training demo movies about Tkfp recently. Check out

post #7663 on our forum.

Here's the Tkfp website: http://tkfp.sourceforge.net

Here's the download page: http://tkfp.sourceforge.net

Here's the release notes page for Tkfp Puppy Linux, which will give

you more instructions and give you websites for Puppy Linux.

http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?

group_id=1589 & release_id=422805

Tkfp has a lot of capability, and a fair number of quirks. You will

need to read about them if you get serious about using Tkfp.

Jerry Park, D.O.