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Open Source Medical Billing Software
tr0tt3r writes "There is a thriving community of people who are devoted to using Free and Open Source Software to run Medical Practices. While there are many projects that are capable of tracking patient data and scheduling functions, there has been no way to run a Doctors office using GPL software because there was no GPL Medical Billing. This is mostly due to the difficulty of handling HCFA 1500 alongside EDI formats like X12.Recently
several different projects have banded together to create FreeB the first GPL medical billing system."
>You do not understand how vertical markets work at all.
Ah, disappointment... I was expecting you to disagree with me factually in some way...
Of course the existing vendors don't care about FOSS (other than to be afraid of it). Why should they? FOSS will disrupt their proprietary business model, as it is currently disrupting all proprietary software business models.
Yeah, FOSS software is how customers will be freed from being violated (to use your term) by license costs, although not support costs. There aren't going to be a bunch of developers giving out free support on IRC for this kind of specialty software. It ain't the fun stuff, that's for sure. As you say it's nothing complicated... that means boring work.
And well, it turns out that it is good for the doctor who can go to anybody for support. But if you've ever done any contracting you would know that once a customer has a vendor they trust who offers them a rate that fits their budget, they tend to stay with that vendor barring some cataclysm or bad service.
Think of it this way... FOSS gives the customer what they want... reasonable prices and no vendor lock-in. And it breaks the market wide open for anyone who wants to enter it since there are no complicated license deals/agreements. It's called "competition" and though the entrenched, established vendors would rather not have any, efforts like this seem to imply it is coming.
There are many non-profit clinincs that operate on shoe-string budgets with donated equipment and doctor time. I think many of these might be interested in a package like this.
Not all doctors make six figures and most doctors donate some time to work on indigint patients.
Cheap storage VM.