Christian,

I can tell you that you’re not going to get very far with these
companies since their code isn’t open source by any means. The major
players, Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Softdent, Practiceworks, Easy Dental and
Orthotrac are owned by major supply houses or by Kodak. In other words,
the only demo available from them is a ‘storyboard’ or a pushy sales
rep. :) The only mainstream open source dental program that *is* open
source is Open Dental (www.open-dent.com).

Dentists are locked very tightly into a vertical market and they have
to pay some very steep prices for what is, in many people’s opinions,
lackluster and buggy programming at best.

OTOH, you may want to download and compile Open Dental and give it a
whirl. Another other open source system that’s going to be released
sooner or later is the PM version of Care2X. More info on the Care2X
line of hospital information systems can be found at www.care2x.com.
The Care2X project is staggering. A huge amount of people contribute to
it and it’s surprising just how quickly this Hospital Information
System has evolved. IMO, Care2X is the future model of open source
systems.

Good luck,
-B