Open Source and Health Care Reform: Good news and bad news

[ Thanks to G Johnson for this link. ]

"The software Children’s Hospital installed, by contrast, was the product of a private company called Cerner Corporation. It was designed by software engineers using locked, proprietary code that medical professionals were barred from seeing, let alone modifying. Unless they could persuade the vendor to do the work, they could no more adjust it than a Microsoft Office user can fine-tune Microsoft Word. While a few large institutions have managed to make meaningful use of proprietary programs, these systems have just as often led to gigantic cost overruns and sometimes life-threatening failures. Among the most notorious examples is Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, in Los Angeles, which in 2003 tore out a "state-of-the-art" $34 million proprietary system after doctors rebelled and refused to use it.

"And because proprietary systems aren’t necessarily able to work with similar systems designed by other companies, the software has also slowed what should be one of the great benefits of digitized medicine: the development of a truly integrated digital infrastructure allowing doctors to coordinate patient care across institutions and supply researchers with vast pools of data, which they could use to study outcomes and develop better protocols."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• Obama, open source & healthcare(Aug 11, 2009)
• Open Source as a Healthcare Solution(Jul 29, 2009)
• 50 Successful Open Source Projects That Are Changing Medicine(Mar 17, 2009)
• Open letter to Obama: Uncle Sam should go open source(Feb 11, 2009)
• Why Open Source and the Net Must Play a Role in Medicine(Jun 25, 2008)
• Open Source is Good for Your Health(Apr 10, 2008)