Hopefully, you like the new CHNWV web site as we have worked very hard on it!
Apart from the aesthetic design there have been some substantial changes in the underlying web server architecture. What you are looking at is an open source content management system and development framework that enables users to quickly build and deploy feature-rich, interactive websites and applications in Microsoft environments. The mechanics of this architecture gives us an extensible platform that will allow us to quickly adapt our web site to the demands of the rapidly evolving and changing healthcare industry.
And did I mention that it is open source? This aligns very nicely with our promotion and championing of open source and open solutions for health information technology – and also keeps me from being somewhat of a hypocrite.
The platform is called, DotNetNuke. I’m sure if you are a technology person that has any familiarity with web based software you have no doubt heard of this application. DotNetNuke (or DNN as most of us tech-folk call it) has been downloaded over 6,000,000 times, is in use on over 400,000 production websites, has a thriving user community, and features a huge array of available third-party extensions. DNN by being open source and very modular in design has opened up a burgeoning economy for the development of add-on modules for the platform. There are over 10,000 modules, skins, and applets available for the DNN platform on the leading marketplace for DNN components - www.Snowcovered.com. And it all started with Microsoft.
Yes, Microsoft. What follows is from the history page on the main DotNetNuke web site:
“In January 2002, Microsoft Corporation published a download named the IBuySpy Portal to demonstrate how to implement specific functionality on the new ASP.NET 1.0 platform. The kits, which provided full source code under a liberal EULA, were functional, but very simplistic, and were intended to aid programmers in developing projects of their own.
On December 24th, 2002, Shaun Walker, a DNN Corp. Founder, released a modified version of the original IBuySpy portal application. The release, which was posted as a link on the Microsoft ASP.NET Forums, included a variety of enhancements and innovations over the original code, including the ability to support multiple portals from a single installation, a feature which became very popular in the shared web hosting market. In the weeks following Walker’s release, thousands of developers from around the world downloaded the code, provided feedback, and created the foundation for an active and loyal development community.
After a number of rapid releases, the application was renamed DotNetNuke on February 28, 2003. The DotNetNuke name was chosen to reflect the application’s roots in the .NET Framework, coupled with the term “nuke,” due to its industry-wide association with open source web content management systems.”
I started using DNN as a corporate Intranet server platform about 5 years ago. And I absolutely fell in love with the extreme modularity and extensibility of the platform. If a piece of functionality didn’t exist, you could just program a new module using Visual Studio and plug it right in to the architecture without impacting any other modules or the main DNN application itself. One can change the look and feel for a web site using DNN as easily as painting a car with “skins” and “containers” that can be overlaid on top of the modules to give them another appearance.
The fact that the system is open source also meant that was also lower cost. For instance, the skin that we started with for our new web site here was purchased from Snowcovered for $89 bucks. Counting the 3 or 4 other modules that we purchased for less than $200 dollars, the photographer that took our employee pictures and the graphic artist who created our banners in Photoshop, we have less than $2500 invested for this entire web site. Compare that to what some other web developers charge for web sites with less than half of the functionality. For an even bigger shock, compare it to those web developers and hosting companies that offer you a “state of the art” content management system. You’ll definitely see the advantages of DNN once you receive those quotes!
There is a lot of buzz in the media about the iPhone as a software development platform and the fact that there are nearly 10,000 applications available for the iPhone – simply because Apple created a nice framework and then released the software development kit (SDK) out to the ecosystem and said, “Make some stuff.” This illustrates the power of open source and open solutions to tap into the huge creativity and innovation capacity of the individual to evolve world-class applications that are higher functioning, lower-cost, more flexible and extensible. DNN has been at the forefront of this effort for almost 6 years. Wouldn’t it be great if health information technology would adopt a similar model instead of the monolithic silos that stifle innovation that we have today? Everyone complains about EMR’s with most of them being described as clunky and inflexible as well as being ridiculously expensive for what they really do. Think about how quickly we could evolve new applications that have higher functionality and lower costs by adopting the DNN or iPhone model. The future is open source and open solutions. Let’s make it happen.
“It has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?” – Rage Against the Machine “Guerilla Radio” (The Battle of Los Angeles, 1999)