H.I.S.-tory by Vince Ciotti

Episode #85: Meditech Part 3

© 2012 by H.I.S. Professionals, LLC, all rights reserved.

The products: from MUMPS to 6.0

MUMPS• You may remember leaving Dr. Octo Barnett’s

brilliant programming team in MIT’s Lab of Computer Science using early DEC PDP minicomputers to develop one of the very first time-sharing systems.

• The software was “MUMPS,” for Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System.

• True to form in the IT industry, MUMPS evolved over time with several iterations, with different names:“M” – pretty easy to figure that acronym out,“MUMPS-11” – for the DEC DPD-11 minicomputer,“DSM” - Digital (DEC) Standard Mumps, and“ISM” – Intersystems M“MacMUMPS” – a version for the Apple Mac OS.

MIIS Offspring• When Neil & Co. formed Meditech in August of 1969, they started

with MUMPS as their programming language and wrote systems for a number of clients offered in a time-sharing basis, including:– Auto parts distribution, hotel chain reservation, international oil

firm, a cola company the Hong Kong Telephone company!– Circa 1071, they renamed their variant of MUMPS as MIIS,

short for “MEDITECH Interpretive Information System.” – In 1973, their clients covered a wide array of industries

including a Court Case Tracking and Parole Reporting System for the New York City Criminal Justice Department (might have been helpful had the Allscripts suit against NYCHHC lasted…)

– MIIS also used to write Meditech’s first product for the Healthcare industry, a propos considering Dr. Barnett’s LCS…

Cape Cod Hospital • whose Pathologist elected to go with

Meditech in 1970 to write a Lab system running via a teletype machine over adial-up phone line via an acoustic coupler, time-sharing on a DEC PDP-15 running at the Meditech facility in nearby Cambridge.

• Who was this daring Doctor? The name “O’Toole” should ring a bell with long-term reader of HIS-talk, as his son, also named Bill,

is a regular contributor from his O’Toole Law Group (781/934-7400) in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Cape Cod Hospital eventually went inhouse on a DG Eclipse C330 minicomputer, adding a full array of LIS apps: microbiology, anatomic pathology and blood bank.

It’s Magic!• Around 1979, Meditech announced the

latest language: Magic, this one with no acronym. As the story goes, programmers were themselves amazed at how code was generated by virtue of the screen design in the era of ‘3GL’ or 3rd generation programming languages of the late ‘70s. Programmers designed screens and when they were done, they hit “File” and the code to create the screen was generated automatically – “like magic!” Cute story…

• For sure, Magic sold that way, as Meditech expanded far beyond its original LIS roots to gradually add every app a total HIS needed:- 1970s = ADT, Pharmacy, Accounts Payable & General Ledger- 1980s = Billing & AR, Orders/Results, Case Mix, & Abstracting.

• In 1985 they introduced “NPR” – no, not that NPR, but Non-Process Reports, a Magic variant that generated reports much faster…

The New Thing…• Hard to remember how the client/server

concept rocked the IT industry back in the 90s as every new vendor/product jumped on the multi-tiered bandwagon that used powerful PCs as servers (instead of the old mainframes and minis), ODBC-compliant data bases like Oracle & Cache, and PCs with GUI front-ends (think Windows 95), all connected via Local Area Networks like Novell.

• It was a bit of a stretch for Meditech to describe Magic’s hard-wired CRTs as “C/S,” so in 1994, Meditech released its “Client/Server” system, the quotes coming from their agreements where their attorneys probably wanted to carefully qualify what they meant by the term. Check this odd press release from Nov. ‘94:

Did It Sell?• Did Meditech’s “Client/Server” sell? Just

like like a… well, you get the picture.• By 1999, Meditech announced its 100th

“Client/Server” (C/S) system client!

• By that time, Meditech had about 700 US hospitals on its Magic NPR platform, plus hundreds of LIS-only (their original market remember), over a hundred clinicals only (viz: HCA/Columbia), plus 100+ international sites, but C/S grew rapidly as Meditech stressed it in all their new system sales.

• To their credit, they did not sunset Magic, and to this day, somewhere around 600 US hospitals still run it as their core HIS, hundreds having attested for Stage 1 MU.

Round Three• Like so many HIS vendors (think McKesson’s

Paragon), Meditech rode the C/S wave throughout the late 90s and early 2000s, before Neil and Company came up with:– Focus, er… Release 6.0, err…– Meditech’s Advanced Technology (MAT)

• Oh, whatever they call it… The point is it’s new, it’s better than C/S or Magic, and if you had any brains (or the money) you’d buy it!

• And that’s just what hospitals have been doing, in droves, for the past several years. What’s so much better about 6.0? Well, if Magic and C/S only go up to release 5.6, then MAT is .4 better or about 10% more, right?

• The point is, it’s the latest & greatest, period.

3 Generations• So there you have it: how Meditech’s 3

platforms evolved over their 40 year HIS-tory. Will be fun to see how they play out:– Will Magic & C/S ever get a release #

LCS MUMPS MIIS Magic

“Client Server”

MAT

Meditech

higher than 5.9? (“Client/Server” is at release 5.6.4 already…)- What will they call it after MAT/Release 6.0 hits release 6.9?

• Ah well, maybe one of your readers will fill in the blanks by then… • Meanwhile, what’s in store for next week? We’ll be covering how Meditech achieved such amazing growth to where they are in 2,300 hospitals worldwide, and the primary HIS for about one out of five hospitals.

• Thanks much to several un-named sources for help with this week, who wished to be remain un-named. Any more volunteers??