GNU/Linux And Open Source Medical Software News

Medical project is finalist in sourceforge 2009

Medical, the Universal Health information system, is finalist on Sourceforge 2009 Community Awards.
With over 47,000 nominations, the community has chosen 85 finalists in 12 categories. Medical is among the best 10 projects this year for government.
This is very exciting and rewarding. To be among the 10 best projects (sharing the space with projects like Open Office) shows the recognition from the community to humanitarian projects like Medical, and positions open source in health sector, an area limited to proprietary vendors until now.

I would like to thank all the doctors, biochemists and computer scientists that are working on the project (from Argentina, Belgium, India, Indonesia, Germany, USA, Uruguay... ) and to all of you who have trust our project by using it, voting it or letting others know that such project exists.
If you want to participate on the project, you can get more info at:
http://medical.sourceforge.net
Thanks
Luis Falcon

CCHIT: New Paths to Certification: Dialog with the Open Source Community

June 16 at 1:00 PM Eastern, will focus on concerns regarding certification of applications licensed under open source models. During the Web conference, Mark Leavitt, M.D., Ph.D., Commission chair, and Dennis Wilson, the Commission’s technology director, will discuss the new concepts from the perspective of technology developers. More information here.

VistA GUI Registration Status Improved!

For you VA VistA fans, here is the status of GUI-registration which has recently changed with tmg-cprs. In case you didn't know, patient registration up until recently was text-based and somewhat annoying in an otherwise good system:

tmg-cprs: works now and so far works very well in clinical situations. Point-click client installer available now and should work out of the box as of Astronaut WorldVistA server Beta 6 installer. It is not browser-based so client deployment is not as simple as browser-based. The non-browser based client is both an advantage and disadvantage for deployment reasons. Local IT staff and management likes that it is not browser-based. It does not require multiple logins or application switching. Works well under pressured situations. Editing demographic mistakes is easy.

m2web: Has it, it is browser-based, but it is somewhat out of date and I could not get it to work due to dojo issues. Jim Self may be refreshing this starting in July. I will include it in a future Astronaut install when it is working. Advantages are that it is lightweight and relatively un-complicated.

VistA Outreach: Browser-based. Has registration but I was unable to get it to install. Others appear to have difficulty installing it as well. It is not in Astronaut because of this. Appears to be heavyweight on the server side, bulky install.

Text based: it works but in clinical settings the staff doesn't like it much and under pressured situations mistakes like a misspelled name is a time-consuming pain to edit. Installs with Astronaut both server and client. Very lightweight and more or less guaranteed to work.

New Jersey to make open source EMRs illegal

Editor's note: it actually does not appear to specifically make open source illegal but the side effect may be that. Unless they are CCHIT certified.

http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2008/Bills/A4000/3934_I1.HTM

PatientOS OpenEHR Demo @ HIMSS Virtual

PatientOS Inc. will be demonstrating with a live system which users can log into, the interoperability between two distinct systems using OpenEHR Archetypes.

VistA electronic health record system : Filling the Skills-Gap

The Veterans Health Administration's open-source electronic health record system VistA is a fully integrated, enterprise-wide healthcare information system that has been developed and used for the past 20 years by the Veterans Health Administration, the largest, centrally directed, healthcare system in the U.S. VistA has been deployed in about 1,500 care sites. More private-sector oriented, open-source versions such as WorldVistA and OpenVista, whose source code is freely availabe could be an effective and low-cost option for non-Veterans Affairs hospitals that are seeking to implement a complete hospital information system, but have been held back by the cost. Open-source VistA can be customized for large hospitals as well as small medical practices, and can serve across the continuum of acute, ambulatory, and long-term care environments. Additionally it is suitable for use in multi-facility, multi-specialty healthcare organizations. Billing components and other additional features can be added without restrictions to Open-source VistA. NewCreationIT is attempting to address a major need for skilled techonolgy personnel who can customize, install, run and support Vista for small or large organizations. Its plans are to add web and mobile Add-ons to VistA.

Medsphere Raising $15 Million

According to this article Medsphere Corp. is raising $15 million in venture capital: 'In a regulatory filing this week, Carlsbad, CA-based Medsphere Systems says it has raised about $1.9 million of a $15 million secondary venture round. Medsphere CEO Michael Doyle told me recently that existing investors have committed $6 million for the round so far. Since it was founded in 2002, Medsphere has raised $50 million from investors that include Azure Capital Partners, Epic Ventures, and Thomas Weisel Partners. The company is commercializing an open source software version of VistA, the electronic health record system developed for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.'

Dangerous Games and Health IT Feudalism

Dr. Koppel,

This is an open letter that I plan to publish on Linux Medical News and elsewhere. As you probably know, your JAMA 'Hold Harmless' article presents just the tip of the iceberg. Your article and more data from the Washington Post article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/15/AR2009051503667.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR
make it abundantly clear that proprietary vendors are intent on establishing private property rights for something that private property rights are clearly not appropriate for. It leads to the logical absurdities, expense, and moral hazards we are experiencing now. The obvious dangers, enormous conflict of interest, as well as highly practical considerations such as simple non-performance of proprietary Electronic Medical Record software is manifest. What the proprietary industry could not achieve with vendor lock-in, legislative help like Stark exceptions, trade secrets, and inadequate products they are attempting to achieve by pure politics. Politicians, proprietary vendors and its lobby are playing 'heads we win, tails you lose, we are king, it is good to be king' games with our safety, our privacy, taxpayer money, and our lives. This may well succeed in ushering in a kind of digital feudalism with the most intimate details of our lives. Such landlord type games are entirely inappropriate for the practice of medicine. They are antithetical to American history and values. A generous and virtuous society should not allow this to occur. (more after the break)

How the HIT Lobby is Pushing Experimental and Unsafe Technology on Unconsented Patients and Clinicians

Scot Silverstein has a must-read article reacting to the recent Washington Post article on Health IT lobbying: "...A lot of voices were left out of that trade group's lobbying. That trade group's massive conflicts of interest also seem to have blinded it to the longstanding concerns of experts in medical informatics that current approaches to health IT are insufficient and may impair healthcare quality initiatives (let's be frank about what that really means - it means patient harm)..."

WP: The Machinery Behind Health-Care Reform

"How an Industry Lobby Scored a Swift, Unexpected Victory by Channeling Billions to Electronic Records" The Washington Post has an eye-opening article on what really happened with the Health IT stimulus bill. It looks like Buckminister Fuller's GRUNCH of Giants is alive and well. I now see the connection between HIMSS, Partners and AMIA. I've often wondered why AMIA has always been dominated by the Northeast/Massachutsetts crowd, why things like the Linux Medical News Freedom Award has been given such a cold reception year after year, and why AMIA leaders seem to hold such contradictory positions to AMIA's mission. Things like government intervention bad (but we lobbied for it secretly), taxpayer money good, proprietary vendors good, physicians and taxpayers in perpetual financial servitude good. Now I know. That the health IT in the stimulus bill isn't a social experiment at best (I'm being charitable) or simply a wealth transfer to proprietary vendors and government at worst is evident. Prove me wrong.