U.S. Government Crafted OSS

matthewg writes "According to the New York Times the federal government has developed an open-source medical records system. It was originally developed for the Department of Veterans Affairs, and doctors started obtaining it under FOIA requests. Some good information on the process of converting it from an internal project to a deployable system exists, and how its open nature has made the system better is available at the WorldVista site." From the article: "Medicare has not estimated what its software giveaway is worth. But Duncan Pringle, chief Vista technologist at Perot Systems, said that each doctor in a practice paid about $20,000 to $25,000 to get started with a commercial system, including costs of software, a license fee charged to each doctor, installation and servicing."

Comments

The goverment is so good at everything else

[protocoldroid]

Yeah, the goverment is doing such a great job with everything else -- spending our taxes, foreign policy, etc...

[sarcasm]...I'm POSITIVE they can sling some great code!![/sarcasm]

Your sign should be:

[ratta]

Remember, Cthulhu for President! Why vote for the GREATER of two evils?

Hidden features

[doublem]

What most people don't know is that there are several new features included in the software, as it came from a government project.

All data is regularly bundled up and sent to the Department of Homeland Security for safe keeping.

Profiling software is run against the data to find "Terrorist Red Flag" items, such as injuries consistent with "Terrorist Training Programs". Please note, the occasional false positive is likely but only against people who are in intensive "Assault combat" classes like Karate. Hardly, save, mainstream activities to begin with, at least not to Government thinking!

The license also requires these features be kept in place. Removing such valuable reporting and safety features is in and of itself a terrorist act. Aiding and abetting and all that.

Isn't in cool what they're doing to protect us? Who knew "Privacy" and "Due Process" were so dangerous? Think how much safer we'll be when the government can cut through all that civil liberties red tape.