Modern Healthcare’s Joseph Conn has an interview about the Harris County Health Information (HCHIC) in Houston putting on an inaugural fundraiser at St. Arnold’s Brewery for a city-wide EHR: ‘After hearing a talk by Stephen Foreman, a Robert Morris associate professor of healthcare administration and economics, Valdes said he gained the “intellectual firepower to do this now.”

“He gave this chat on why (proprietary) electronic medical software is not going to work and probably never will,” Valdes recalled. “It’s a public good and not a private good. People are going at this like it is a piece of furniture when it is really like a lighthouse. What he said was, according to economic theory and practice, you need to treat it like a public good, and free and open source shifts it toward a public good.”