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.
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.
The Health Care Blog: Should Health Care Standards be Open Source?
Alan Viars puts up a post Should Health Care Standards be Open Source? over a the Health Care Blog.
Using the CCR as an example, he goes on to address standards in general.
OpenEMR to be Used for Health Maintenance in Mumbai (Bombay)
Jain Suveinay and Dr. R. D. Lele of Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India are working on a project to use OpenEMR in a trial Health Maintenance Organization. Their plan is to deliver health care to include 100 doctors managing the health care of 50000 families (4 members per family) spread over a wide area network. The patient population lives in a slum area of Mumbai. Jain Suveinay: We will have a central server which will be accessed by the GP’s. Links to pharmacy and hospital will be also there. There is more information concerning this initiative at Health Maintenance in Mumbai
GNUmed 0.4.4 released
GNUmed EMR for medical offices has been updated to version 0.4.4. Fixes include reenabled path sanity check that fell off when fixing Windows and a fix that makes recent notes in SOAP plugin copy-able for pasting. A new Live-CD has been released as well. More info can be gotten from
http://wiki.gnumed.de
Medsphere Lands Another Hospital
Full announcement here: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Nationally Recognized Psychiatric Hospital Selects Medsphere’s Open Source Electronic Health Record to Transform Clinical Care
Silver Hill Hospital Chooses OpenVista to Improve Efficiency and Patient Care
CARLSBAD, California – April 29, 2009 – Medsphere Systems Corporation, the leading provider of open source healthcare IT solutions, today announced a five-year contract with Connecticut’s Silver Hill Hospital for implementation, training and support of the company’s OpenVista electronic health record (EHR) solution.
Testifying on ‘meaningful use’
Fred Trotter writes: I have recently been asked to testify at the NCVHS hearings on meaningful use (see forwarded message below). This is very likely because I have been working as a representative of the FOSS community with CCHIT to resolve the basic incompatibility with current CCHIT certification and FOSS EHR systems. For a decent summary you can read the CCHIT category on my blog or read some of the mainstream blogs: slashdot and ZDnet
Now I will be asked to testify on what ‘Meaningful Use’ of EHR systems means from a FOSS perspective. I am having discussions on what I should cover on both Hardhats (VistA community) and OpenHealth (larger FOSS community). Feel free to email me off-line (fred dot trotter at gmail dot com) or simply reply to this thread, with your thoughts.