OpenDental in the Cloud... serverless setup

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sammyp42
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Location: Redwood City, CA

OpenDental in the Cloud... serverless setup

Post by sammyp42 » Wed Jun 04, 2014 1:26 pm

Did a some quick searches and I can't seem to find a straight forward answer.

We currently are running Dentrix G4 on a very, very old server that is about to go kaput. I would love to go to OpenDental, but I also don't want to buy a new server. Using Google Drive works well for storing files and is HIPAA compliant. That leaves MySQL... I would like to use Google Cloud SQL, but I'm not 100% clear on what needs to be done to make this setup HIPAA compliant.

Anyone been through this kind of setup? Mainly, I want to run on a MySQL instance hosted on a reliable environment outside of the office... minimizing cost, without loosing security.

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drtech
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Re: OpenDental in the Cloud... serverless setup

Post by drtech » Fri Jun 06, 2014 7:58 am

I wouldn't do cloud, just buy a new, normal computer and use it as your server for OD. Internet is so much slower to store photos, x-rays, etc. And what if you internet is down for an hour, are you out of business? I like to have it on hand and back up to a cloud for offiste recovery.
A normal windows 8 pro computer should work great unless you have a lot of computers connecting to it (> 15?)
David Fuchs
Dentist - Springfield, MO
Smile Dental http://www.887-smile.com

sammyp42
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Location: Redwood City, CA

Re: OpenDental in the Cloud... serverless setup

Post by sammyp42 » Fri Jun 06, 2014 11:57 am

This is a very small solo-practice where I am the IT support, but I have separate full-time job. Google Drive actually works well for photos and x-rays, bandwidth does not seem to be an issue. I am more concerned about outages caused by server being down (causing me to loose day of work, if I'm even available) than I am by an Amazon / Google outage.... I know I would take longer to fix a server issue than Amazon, or Google would take to fix an outage... and it requires almost no time on my part.

Overall, want to minimize tech footprint within office and limit it to essentials that are used on and with patients.

I also seems like a Web based version of open dental might be in the works? What is the current status? I would love to try and/or contribute.

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B.Thomas
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Re: OpenDental in the Cloud... serverless setup

Post by B.Thomas » Thu Dec 04, 2014 3:12 am

I would also like the idea of a cloud based server. I think the main obstacle right now is HIPAA compliance. If you could find a company that hosted a hipaa compliant virtual server, then you could simply install opendental on it and connect to it via a vpn.

KevinRossen
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Re: OpenDental in the Cloud... serverless setup

Post by KevinRossen » Thu Dec 04, 2014 1:13 pm

B.Thomas wrote:I would also like the idea of a cloud based server. I think the main obstacle right now is HIPAA compliance. If you could find a company that hosted a hipaa compliant virtual server, then you could simply install opendental on it and connect to it via a vpn.
You can get a Business Associate Agreement from Amazon so you can run a virtual server from them. It's their EC2 service. BUT, it's really, really expensive to do so. You're required to run a dedicated instance, which costs an additional $2 per HOUR on top of the computing, storage, and bandwidth costs. So, just the dedicated instance portion of the costs with Amazon with cost you $17,520 per year to run it 24/7. There are other cloud providers out there, but was B.Thomas mentions, HIPAA compliance is the trickiest, and most expensive part.

That being said, my biggest concern with a cloud server for a dental office is latency. Assuming you're taking digital xrays, that's a lot of data going back and forth and would require a rock solid internet connection.
Kevin Rossen
Office Manager, Rossen Dental
Founder, DivergentDental.com
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dgraffeo
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Re: OpenDental in the Cloud... serverless setup

Post by dgraffeo » Thu Dec 04, 2014 3:20 pm

Hello,
We have a page about some of this in our manual here: http://www.opendental.com/manual/multiplelocations.html
Perhaps some of this will be of use to you!
"To understand what recursion is, you must first understand recursion."

David Graffeo
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

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