OpenEMR Backup Tools

Overview

I am going to get on a little small soapbox for all the newbies using OpenEMR.

Electronic Medical Records are your livelihood and exist to protect the health of your patients. If you are going to be your own IT manager you have to approach this professionally. The first most basic requirement of any database is a regular, frequent, comprehensive backup system.

My system does real time back-ups to a second server. I also run a MySQL dump every 24 hours. I do this myself and I don't trust it to anyone else.

Losing my data terrifies me and it should terrify you.

I have not this happen to me, but some of our local practices have had break-ins where all the computers were stolen. If they carry off your server you'll be in a big mess.

Hardware fails. Lightning strikes happen. I have had both occur since I started running OpenEMR. A good backup strategy is drudgery but nothing will give such a warm, glowing, fuzzy, feeling like successfully recovering your system from a recent backup after a lightning strike that burns out a critical component on your server.

Please backup your databases on a regular basis (daily is best). Make frequent secure backups of the MySQL data and the data in the openemr / documents directory. These are the irreplaceable parts.

I back up my data on a daily basis. If you have the resources it is best to back up to an off site facility. This can be done electronically over a secure internet connection (VPN) or you can burn CDs / DVDs and carry them off site.

Always backup before starting an upgrade.

Sam Bowen, MD

Linux

• Mandriva Backup : This method/script will backup the complete MySQL database, the complete PostGreSQL database, the OpenEMR patient scanned documents file directories, the OpenEMR directory containing patient billing files, and the FreeB directory containing patient billing files. It will automatically backup to a secure local directory and burn the encrypted data to a multisession DVD(so, you can just leave the same DVD in the drive).
• Ubuntu Backup : This method/script will backup the complete MySQL database and the complete OpenEMR web directory. It will automatically backup to a secure local directory and burn the encrypted data to a multisession DVD(so, you can just leave the same DVD in the drive).
• updated version of Ubuntu Backup : an updated and modified version of the Ubuntu Backup script above.
• Backing Up Using the Built In Tools : OpenEMR has a built in 'backup' facility. this page describes how to use it, and how to manually perform the same task.
• Dump Database - Hourly  : This procedure creates a database dump every hour and cleans out old backups once a day.

Windows

• Windows Backup/Recovery a Downloadable HowTo using Windows Batch Routine Files (PDF Copy Enclosed) written by Joe Holzer.