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Hope For FOSS In Electronic Health Records
Fred Trotter writes "CCHIT is the dominant Electronic Health Record certification body in the US. It is also decidedly anti-FOSS and has been for years. Certification of one kind or another will be required for EHR systems to qualify for funding under the Stimulus Act. If CCHIT is chosen as the certification body, and the current certification strategies continue, it will not be possible to have a funded EHR that is both certified and truly FOSS. Now, however, CCHIT has agreed to meet the FOSS Health IT community at HIMSS 09 to address this issue." We discussed the shortcomings in the stimulus bill as it relates to FOSS a few days back.
The author unwittingly says more than he intended when he complains about the cost of certification:
Suppose I pay the fee to have MirrorMed (my project of choice) certified. There is no way for me to guarentee that only I benifit from the "seal". My competitors which have full access to the code that I would have certified would be able to correctly claim that the code had been certified, and would benifit with me.
For years, FOSS advocates have talked about how freely redistributable open source software is the better model, and how it's still possible to make money off open source software. Well, if open source is the better, more powerful model for developing software, the certification fee shouldn't be a problem. But as the author points out, he pays the fee, his competitors take the certified software and sell. This just shines a spotlight on the basic problem with commercializing FOSS.
FOSS is the ultimate conflict of interest. God forbid I need to make some money in order to get my FOSS software product in use in the medical industry. The community will think I sold out :((
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them