We began using GENIE in 1994 when we opened our practice in Abbotsford. We wanted to computerize from the beginning so as to have a paperless office. We carefully explored the suppliers of optometric solutions at that time and choose GENIE

We use GENIE in every aspect of our practice from patient entry, billing, examination forms, dispensing, marketing and referral letters.

The system is extremely reliable and backed up by prompt and efficient customer service. In 6 years of use our office has had less than 2 hours of down time. At one point a piece of hardware failed. GENIE quickly diagnosed the problem via modem and dispatched an IBM service rep. who replaced the part and we haven't looked back since. GENIE runs on a UNIX operating system which is very reliable. We presently have one server and five dumb terminals (screen + monitor and no moving parts), the system allows for easy and inexpensive addition of more workstations as we grow.

GENIE's customer service is excellent. Their '1-800' number allows for easy access to their support staff in Calgary. They have always answer our questions promptly and fix any bugs that show up in our software usually within the same business day. Every issue that comes up has been solved to our satisfaction.

This past fall we had to update our server to become Y2K compatible. This involved a major expense for our practice. At this point we decided to look at other software solutions available on the market as many new ones had come out since 1994. We were very tempted to switch to a windows based system. GENIE is a text based system and doesn't have the pretty graphical interface that a windows system does. We talked to many windows users who ran networks in their office. Many of them said that their systems would crash 1-2 times per week and they accepted this as a normal aspect of windows technology. I guess we have been spoiled with the reliability of GENIE but we just couldn't see ourselves fixing computer crashes all the time. Just knowing that the system will be up and running day in and day out was a great comfort.

We ended up staying with GENIE and we are happy with our decision. The system does everything that we need it to do to run a modern growing optometric practice. Not only is the hardware/software very reliable but so are the team of professionals behind it. I would highly recommend GENIE as an excellent optometric computer solution.