I work in the HIT industry, but I don't particularly care for it, so hopefully I'm a mix of informed and unbiased on this one.
There are two types of things to consider as "open source" for HIT. The first, which is what most of this is discussing, is the core software package. This being open source wouldn't really work. For one thing, that would _eliminate_ jobs, which is a rather backwards way to write a stimulus package, and a more important issue, the complication level would be such a hindrance.
That being said, we're still in the fledgling years of EMR. It would in no way shock me if, say, ten years down the line, some hospital IT worker sits down with some friends and starts an open-source project. It's fairly rare for open-source to precede commercial, as open source projects _tend_ to copy commercial ideas.
Even after that, I would doubt that hospitals would go clamoring for the open source. Professionals still tend to use commercial projects over open-source ones.
I alluded to two types of open source possible. The second form of open source you could refer to is with EMRs themselves, that being the ability to pass information from one system of proprietary software to a different system, so that that patient care isn't hindered by a patient going to a different hospital for some reason (usually emergency). I can't speak for other companies, but I know mine, which is one of the larger ones, is working on this fairly actively.
So, yes, I understand the "open source good company bad" thought, I just don't think it can be universally applied.
I can't remember if it was Jung or Campbell, but this theory's been around since the first half of the 20th century, unless there's some detail about this I'm missing.
Well, this is a rather minor thing, but I'd like some Ctrl+tab tab browsing for Excel. And for the clipboard to stop popping up everytime I'm copying more than two things.
Overall, I don't want anymore features -- I'd like them to simplify things a bit, clean things up.
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I work in the HIT industry, but I don't particularly care for it, so hopefully I'm a mix of informed and unbiased on this one. There are two types of things to consider as "open source" for HIT. The first, which is what most of this is discussing, is the core software package. This being open source wouldn't really work. For one thing, that would _eliminate_ jobs, which is a rather backwards way to write a stimulus package, and a more important issue, the complication level would be such a hindrance. That being said, we're still in the fledgling years of EMR. It would in no way shock me if, say, ten years down the line, some hospital IT worker sits down with some friends and starts an open-source project. It's fairly rare for open-source to precede commercial, as open source projects _tend_ to copy commercial ideas. Even after that, I would doubt that hospitals would go clamoring for the open source. Professionals still tend to use commercial projects over open-source ones. I alluded to two types of open source possible. The second form of open source you could refer to is with EMRs themselves, that being the ability to pass information from one system of proprietary software to a different system, so that that patient care isn't hindered by a patient going to a different hospital for some reason (usually emergency). I can't speak for other companies, but I know mine, which is one of the larger ones, is working on this fairly actively. So, yes, I understand the "open source good company bad" thought, I just don't think it can be universally applied.
I can't remember if it was Jung or Campbell, but this theory's been around since the first half of the 20th century, unless there's some detail about this I'm missing.
Well, this is a rather minor thing, but I'd like some Ctrl+tab tab browsing for Excel. And for the clipboard to stop popping up everytime I'm copying more than two things.
Overall, I don't want anymore features -- I'd like them to simplify things a bit, clean things up.
Wouldn't pay for just that, though.