Open Source Order Entry Preferred Over Closed

JAMIA reported in this research article that Physician’s preferred the Free/Open Source based order entry system in the Veterans Administration VistA software versus a commercial one: ‘…Overall, house staff were dissatisfied with the commercial system, giving it an overall mean score of 3.67 (95 percent confidence interval [95%CI], 3.37-3.97). In contrast, the CPRS had a mean score of 7.21 (95% CI, 7.00-7.43), indicating that house staff were satisfied with the system…’ While this data is compelling, it is worth pointing out that Free/Open Source Software does not pre-clude or exclude commercial companies from selling installation, support, training and documentation for it. They just don’t ask you to give up your rights in doing so.

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