CanadianEMR’s Blog has an posting debating the relative merits of Open Source vs. Closed EMR’s. The author of the blog posting is a bit pessimistic speaking about it as being in the future. I wonder if he knows about the Canadian born OSCAR project available right now with service contracts? ‘The ‘open source’ EMR debate is one that has raged on for years. The concept is quite straightforward, open the code for a particular EMR system. Allow end users to modify and adapt the program so that enhancements can be progressively built into the EMR system. Share the experience of the end-users with others in the open source environment. Progressively the software will improve and will achieve greater functionality. More important, through the participation of 1000’s (hopefully) of users, there is reduced likelihood that the software would become outdated and that the vendor may fail. At least that is the theory…’