Open Dental Cloud....

[ryansmithdds]

Hey,

I have a couple dental practices and am opening up a third in a few months and am really wanting to keep using open dental but it is becoming clear that a cloud hosted pms is what we are wanting to work towards.... it would simplify so much of our it issues etc. Even if we kept radiographs local, not a big deal but the pms would be great to have on the cloud. Anyone here running open dental in such a way, maybe through google cloud sql?

Anyone know if / when open dental might offer a cloud hosting solution? Any companies right now that could help maintain / setup a cloud hosted solution? I hope so because i don't want to switch from open dental......

thanks

[KevinRossen]

You could setup a cloud server via Google Cloud Engine. They offer a BAA and their costs are by far more affordable than any other solution I've found that offers a BAA. That may be your best bet.

[ryansmithdds]

I am tech savvy but dont know if i would want to be responsible for everything there. Are there any companies that help get this going and help with this if there are issues? Any idea on how the speed is?

[KevinRossen]

I am tech savvy but dont know if i would want to be responsible for everything there. Are there any companies that help get this going and help with this if there are issues? Any idea on how the speed is?

Hi Ryan,

I've reached out to one of my contacts to see if he would be able to assist. I'll share when I hear back from him.

[ryansmithdds]

Ok great I appreciate it! I would assume if open dental could offer a turn key solution for this it would be quite popular..... It would certainly be a lot easier than the web version....

[KevinRossen]

Ok great I appreciate it! I would assume if open dental could offer a turn key solution for this it would be quite popular..... It would certainly be a lot easier than the web version....

There are a few different cloud server providers out there, all of which have their pros and cons. The biggest obstacle has been price. Most that I've found are around $800/mo, which doesn't make sense financially when you can get a top notch local server for under $2,000. Google's cloud platform has some nice options around $100/mo, so that makes a lot more sense financially. They offer a BAA. Plus, their business depends on up-time, so I have no concerns whatsoever about their reliability.

[trentwolodko]

To be clear, you want to be able to use a cloud-based virtual machine instance to host the opendental MySQL database and A2Z folders and allow clients at multiple locations to connect to this data.

What speed of internet connection do you have at the locations? You would need highly reliable, very fast connections (download AND upload) for it to have a chance of working.

What you're requesting is touched on briefly by Opendental in this document: http://www.opendental.com/manual/multiplelocations.html Scroll down about 3/4 of the way until you get to "Private Cloud".

Setting up such a cloud server capable of being the RDS host for all locations may still prove to be cost prohibitive, but it really depends on the number of stations you'd want to host on that server. I'm also not sure exactly how you'd get imaging to bridge properly with such an approach as the imaging app would need to be remote desktop services compatible as well.

Internet speed and reliability would be paramount. If your internet conks out, you're dead. If it's slow, you will pull all your hair out and go insane watching hourglasses and waiting forever for your images to show up/upload.

What may work better is a daisy chain replication scheme like the one you see on figure 13 and described in more detail here: http://www.opendental.com/manual/replication.html However, from what I've heard, you have to really know what you're doing with MySQL in order to manage such replication, and even then the replication can still crash which can then lead to corruption.

[KevinRossen]

Trent is the person I mentioned in my previous post. I want to vouch for him since he's only done one post at this forum.

[uimtiaz]

Hi,

Is anyone with multiple locations running open dental on the cloud. How has your experience been. I have 6 locations and am looking to set up open dental on google cloud server.

Thanks

Umar

[rambochambo]

I've got 5 locations working via the daisy chain mentioned above. They all replicate themselves in real time. I'm not the expert on it but my IT company has it working pretty well. Rarely it will have an issue and its usually associated with a power outage or internet loss. If that happens they will re-sync over night and were good the next day.

[ryansmithdds]

I am trying to figure out what the best route is going forward..... The cloud option seems nice and would probably scale up the easiest. I have three practices and am looking at centralizing things and merging with a friend that has 4 practices. I would the. Like a setup that could easily scale to like 20 locations...

At what point is the clinics feature and shared databases no longer reasonable and what would be the best method for a call center and 20+ locations?

[asceticwonder]

Hi everyone, anyone have current recommendations on hosting services?

Case scenario: an office in daisy chain scheme goes down. A new patient is created in this office and new patients are created in the other offices. When the office comes back into the chain and the DBs sync, how does MySQL and OD handle collisions? Are the UIDs for each new patient randomly created or are they incremental?

Thanks!
Dr. Jacob Eisdorfer
http://www.sleepytooth.com

EDIT: Don't answer me anyone, I found my answer here: http://www.opendental.com/manual/replic ... ement.html

I've got 5 locations working via the daisy chain mentioned above. They all replicate themselves in real time. I'm not the expert on it but my IT company has it working pretty well. Rarely it will have an issue and its usually associated with a power outage or internet loss. If that happens they will re-sync over night and were good the next day.

I am trying to figure out what the best route is going forward..... The cloud option seems nice and would probably scale up the easiest. I have three practices and am looking at centralizing things and merging with a friend that has 4 practices. I would the. Like a setup that could easily scale to like 20 locations...

At what point is the clinics feature and shared databases no longer reasonable and what would be the best method for a call center and 20+ locations?

[nanfad]

For now. Amazon RDS seems to be the way to go. RDS is a cloud based mysql engine. Its very cheap and scalable. Its NOT the same as a virtual machine. I'm testing it out with the Open Dental team right now. Also Dropbox integration is likely coming in the next release. So you can host your entire A to Z folder on dropbox for about 10 bucks a month.

As for Amazon RDS, I am testing it now. Latency is still an issue. I'm getting about a 100ms latency delay between my gigabit connection and the amazon servers using the built in latency tool in OD. Amazon RDS is VERY robust. You can setup hot backup servers, replication, and pick your server based on your geographic location. You can even restrict connections to certain IPs and hostnames. This will likely be the way to go until a full web version is released. A hosted solution will be the way to go using one of the big 3 vendors (Amazon, Google or Windows Azure)

Stay tuned for Amazon RDS directions and the dropbox integration.

[Arna]

Drop Box??
I've had some AWFUL experiences with Drop Box and Open Dental users. You've really got to know what you're doing with it, or you run the risk of corrupting your entire setup. Of all the messes I've had to clean up, the worst have all involved Drop Box and the loss was devastating.

[nanfad]

Not the dropbox client or anything to do with the client. Straight cloud storage local caching.

You can sort of already do this manually with a 3rd party client on the server like Goodsync or Cloudberry. You just mount the drive letter to the online storage on the server and all the Open Dental clients just see it as a shared drive on the network. I already do this with Amazon Cloud.

[Arna]

Phew! You had me a little worried. DropBox can be an awesome tool, however in most cases it is not appropriate for dentistry.
Do they provide Business Associate Agreements?

[drmkpillai]

Hi
I have been with colossus cloud of severpoint for last 3 years,they are compliant with all the required norms , very flexible control panel and most of all cost effective.
Their USP customer friendly prompt service.
Using RDP with multiuser license on WIndows 10 Professional ( of course not yet supported by the company).
Going great with a database of 25000+ patients.

[ryansmithdds]

If someone could please post some brief instructions / estimated costs for amazon or google cloud or really any service you have experience. I really want to get a cloud hosted version tested and going.....

How are speeds compared to a vpn setup?

thanks!!

[pid_user]

Stay tuned for Amazon RDS directions and the dropbox integration.

Please do share your findings.
We had started with RDS...but had to move things locally because of latency. Now that RDS is being used as realtime backup.

[wizkid]

I did this 4 years ago for 3 dental offices one in Lake Havasu City AZ called JustForKids and two others in Bullhead city NV and Kingman AZ and
they love it. Its been trouble free for them and they no longer deal with technology it just works everywhere. So now they can allow their accountant in remotely and get to their clients from any location.

[pid_user]

I did this 4 years ago for 3 dental offices one in Lake Havasu City AZ called JustForKids and two others in Bullhead city NV and Kingman AZ and
they love it. Its been trouble free for them and they no longer deal with technology it just works everywhere. So now they can allow their accountant in remotely and get to their clients from any location.

Please do share more...how it works.