Think your CCHIT certified, proprietary EMR from a ‘big’ corporation is a safe bet? Think again. Remember Enron? From GPLmedicine.org comes news that a recently #1 ranked, CCHIT certified EMR company, AcerMed, is either severely crippled or has bit the dust. Why is this significant?

It is significant because Electronic Medical Record software isn’t like a restaurant chain. People’s lives depend upon it. Many EMR software acquisition decision makers think that a proprietary EMR from a ‘big’ company that is CCHIT certified is ‘safe’ and ‘isn’t going to go away soon’. Many in the Free and Open Source Software licensed EMR crowd know that this is an utterly false sense of security and that the only safe bet is a non-proprietary FOSS licensed EMR. Further that it is un-ethical to do it any other way.

Despite this latest AcerMed debacle, are easily predictable (paragraph 4). Spectacular failures of proprietary EMR software that leave users totally stranded have occurred before. AcerMed and other proprietary failures have occurred often enough but few seem to think that this is odd, unusual or unacceptable. The mainstream perception continues to be that it is the other way around, that it is a gamble to use FOSS in medicine. Therefore, worthy CCHIT certified, FOSS licensed software like WorldVistA EHR/VOE 1.0, and vendors that service it and support it continue to be largely underutilized and, with important exceptions, under-funded.

This can change with advocacy by volunteers, stakeholders, organizations and vendors. All who have a genuine concern for medicine need to made their voices heard for the end of proprietary EMR software in medicine and the large scale utilization and funding of FOSS licensed EMR software. This can be as simple as volunteering to sit on EMR choosing committees, articles in publications and support through service contracts of companies and organizations that adhere to FOSS based principles.