Comment by n8henrie
2 years ago
I'm an emergency physician in a US healthcare system (run by the federal government) whose electronic medical record is apparently written in MUMPS.
Dealing with simultaneous crashing patients and crashing EMRs is a challenge. Daily popups notifying me of out-of-bounds index errors or [insert memory safety error] that I've given up screenshotting and sending to IT, because none of them know MUMPS either. Can't order a critical medication or view the result of a critical lab result because EHR is crashing again...
In spite of at least basic familiarity with bash, python, go, rust, nix, and having at least looked into Haskell, Common Lisp, and a few others... the few snippets of our EHR's backend MUMPS I've seen completely unintelligible to me.
My understanding is that the bus factor for vast swaths of our EMR infra is ~1.
OH MY GOD does the VA _still_ use CPRS?
The VA is replacing CPRS (built on Mumps) with an Oracle Cerner commercial EHR. This transition is very complex and is scheduled to continue through 2028.
https://digital.va.gov/ehr-modernization/news/
Nope, not the VA, just someone that borrows much of their codebase. (EDIT: but yes, I think the VA is transitioning to Cerner but still on CPRS for the time being.)