academic EHR

Anonymous865 · Feb 12, 2015

Speaking as a computer geek not a nurse, here's how I would go about troubleshooting this problem:

1. Call the school's IT helpdesk. If they have computers in the school, they have someone responsible for taking care of them. They should have experience with this software, since it's running on the school's computers also.

2. If you don't get anywhere there, call the software vendor's helpdesk. Since you purchased the software you ought to have a help line you can call.

3. Go to the software vendor's web site. They should have known bugs and fixes listed on their web site.

I would be very surprised if the problems you are experiencing are from a virus introduced by this software.

Cerner and Citrix are very large, very reputable software companies. They will have mechanisms in place to prevent spreading a virus via their downloads. That would pretty much kill a software company.

Most hackers probably haven't even heard of Cerner. EMR software isn't well known outside the medical communities. Even if hackers knew about Cerner, they probably wouldn't target it. It's not running on enough computers to make it worth their effort. If you are going to write a virus, you want to get the biggest bang for your effort which is why microsoft is targeted so much. It's running on a huge portion of computers.

One of the reasons companies use Citrix is because of the low risk of viruses. The real guts of the program is running on the Citrix server which is centrally managed. The software running on your home computer is probably doing nothing more than updating your screen. It's probably not writing any data on your home computer.

If people had viruses crashing their systems, I'd suspect other software they downloaded (like opening email attachments) before I'd suspect Cerner or Citrix.

I hope you all are running virus protection software. You should be able to get a report from it to see if it has detected and cleaned any viruses off your system.

The first thing I would look at on your system is software / version compatability. Are you running an operating system, OS version, patch level that is supported by the Cerner and Citrix software. (This should be in your software documentation. If not, look on the software vendor's web site.) If that is good, then you might have other software running that is not compatible with the Cerner or Citrix. The other software and Cerner/Citrix might be trying to use the same resources.

If you are getting any kind of error message when it crashes, try googling the error message. You might find a fix that way.

Good luck.

CarrieSheppard · Feb 12, 2015

Thank you so much for your reply. I have actually utilized my university's IT department to clean my own computer twice now. Other students have utilized this service as well. I will try to call them tomorrow to explore this issue further.

I just did a live chat through the support site, and I was advised there were not any problems, and to contact the school's IT department.

I am fairly computer savvy and can usually walk other members of my class though this program, and I am an EMR superuser and trainer at my current employer with Allscripts. I have been hearing this rumor that it is this software causing the problem for sometime, but was not a full believer until tonight.

I ran my anti-virus software tonight, and now I can no longer access the charting software, as the virus protection has stopped it. I will try chat again tomorrow, as I do have Windows 7, and see if I am not compatible as far as having an old operating system. However, as I was trying to walk another student through her issues this evening, and she has windows 8, her virus protection too stopped her from completing the download. Any other suggestions you or others have would be greatly appreaciated!