eCW Installation

Typically an Open Dental support technician installs Open Dental and sets up the eClinicalWorks bridge for practices, following the steps below.

Note: If a user turns on the eCW bridge, the existing passwords for all users stop working. Before turning on the bridge, make sure the admin password in Open Dental is blank. After the bridge is turned on, then set the passwords.


Installation Path

If using Tight or Full integration, Open Dental must be installed to the same path on all computers in order for the bridge from eCW to work.

The path C:\Program Files\Open Dental\ is not a good choice. 64-bit versions of Windows will not allow this path to be used for a 32-bit program like Open Dental.

Also see eCW Install Workstation.

Assistance is also required from eCW installers to set this bridge path in eCW.

Bridge Setup

  1. In the Main Menu, click Setup, Program Links, then double click on eClinicalWorks.
  2. Check the Enabled box to turn the bridge on.
  3. Select the eCW Bridge Modes (Tight Integration, Standalone, Full).
  4. Set the path(s) to the HL7 Sync Folders. The paths aree relative to the server computer, not the current workstation.
  5. See eClinicalWorks HL7 and follow the instructions to install the OpenDentalHL7 service on the server.

Optional Setup

Standalone Mode

If using Standalone mode, follow these instructions to set up the bridge.

  1. Enable the eClinicalWorks bridge, selecting Standalone.
  2. Follow the instructions for setting up the Open Dental eCW HL7 application.
  3. Work with eClinicalWorks support to have eCW start sending HL7 messages to the folder. Only demographic messages are sent (ADT). If the patient does not seem to exist in Open Dental, or the demographic information for a patient is different, then trigger an ADT message from eCW, probably by resaving the patient information in eCW. Remember that the ChartNumber in Open Dental contains the PatientID from eCW.