SJBJ: Cost, doctor usage are obstacles to IT system

The San Jose Business Journal has an article about a practice that built its own record software due to the high cost of closed software: ‘…Software companies wanted to charge Camino Medical Group nearly $10 million to install an electronic medical records system for its 175 physicians, a price the nonprofit couldn’t afford.

“We didn’t have that kind of money,” says Mahnaz Choobineh, chief information officer for Palo Alto Medical Foundation, the parent organization of Camino Medical.

Three years ago, Camino hired a few people to build its own electronic system for medical records, patient referral and real-time messaging for staff. The cost: $500,000… “Our biggest challenge is convincing the doctors to drop the paper and start using the computer,” says Ms. Choobineh. Transferring medical information from paper file to electronic format is a habit that doctors still need to get used to, she says…’ It would be great if they open sourced it, or put the development effort into an already existing free/open package.

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