OpenHIE source donated to Open Health Tools (OHT)

OAKLAND, CA-August 11, 2008- Open Health Tools (OHT) today announced it has accepted a donation from the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) of key software components from a $10 million health information data exchange project. CHCF provided the open source-format software code to OHT, a community of information technology and health care participants, to help accelerate establishment of regional health information exchanges, a critical but often missing piece of the health care delivery system. Information about the Open Health Information Exchange project (openHIE) can be found at https://openhie.projects.openhealthtools.org/.

"CollabNet facilitated CHCF's efforts and will support all future code donations to OHT. We are providing a world-class development platform and online community services to enable OHT's members and distributed project teams to collaborate in an open and secure environment," said Tony de la Lama, vice president of Corporate Strategy and Marketing at CollabNet. "The CollabNet platform is a perfect fit for the vision of a global Health Information Exchange System where health organizations anywhere in the world are able to collaborate, share code and jointly develop software and new technology standards."

Palamida conducted software composition analysis on the California HealthCare Foundation code base and provided a complete inventory of all open source and third-party projects and versions in use for identification of known vulnerabilities and intellectual property ownership. "Open Health Tools is taking an important step towards expanding the use of open source in the health care market," said Mark Tolliver, Palamida CEO. "We're proud to have been chosen by OHT to assure its community that its projects are enterprise-ready."

According to a March 2006 commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of CHCF: "Successful development of open source software for health care will require viable developer communities. Such communities, which share an interest in a particular type of software, are the engines that drive open source projects."

CHCF originally supported development of the contributed software for the Santa Barbara County Care Data Exchange (SBCCDE), one of the nation's first regional health information exchanges. The SBCCDE ceased operations in 2006, but it spurred the federal government's adoption of a plan to establish regional health information organizations (RHIOs) throughout the United States. Jonah Frohlich, CHCF senior program officer explained, "Our experience taught us that these exchanges can improve quality and access to vital clinical information when and where it is needed. With the potential for cost reduction, we hope that more clinics and practices in underserved communities take advantage of open source products."

CollabNet lowers the barrier of entry for global organizations to collaborate, code share and co-develop software and technology standards. CollabNet's secure environment and software development platform allows projects and project teams to ramp up in days rather than weeks.

About Open Health Tools

Open Heath Tools is a collaborative effort between national health agencies, major healthcare providers, researchers, academics, international standards bodies and companies from Australia, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe. Its goal is to develop common healthcare IT products and services and provide software tools and components that accelerate the implementation of electronic health information interoperability platforms, thus improving patient quality of care, safety and access to electronic health records (EHR).

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