After reading the parts of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that relate to health IT, here are my conclusions: 1) More of the same. The current plans and all the same players for Health IT as before only now there is a lot more money involved and a brief time to accomplish all of this in terms of health care time: 2014. 2) A chicken in every pot approach, everyone gets money: education, Health IT schools, some physicians get money for implementation on a descending rate. Some talk of free/open source but the usual political favorites AHIC, etc. are all still there as well only they get a lot more money now. 3) No clear plan as to how to do all this. No clear plan for dealing with issues such as 20 year veteran clinicians and nurses with no computer experience. No plan for enabling the proliferation of innovative software with existing systems. No penalty or plans for dealing with proprietary software stonewalling.

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OMG™, Health Level Seven® (HL7), and the SOA Consortium™ announce the “SOA in Healthcare: Value in a Time of Change,” conference held June 2-4, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Chicago, IL. Registration details may be found online at http://www.omg.org/hc-std

Gold Sponsor: EDS
Silver Sponsors: Appian, Intel

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About page 701 of the stimulus bill is a provision for studying Open Source: “…(A) the current availability of open source
6 health information technology systems to Fed7
eral safety net providers (including small, rural
8 providers);
9 (B) the total cost of ownership of such sys10
tems in comparison to the cost of proprietary
11 commercial products available;
12 (C) the ability of such systems to respond
13 to the needs of, and be applied to, various pop14
ulations (including children and disabled indi15
viduals); and
16 (D) the capacity of such systems to facili17
tate interoperability…’

“The US Department of Defense, which has been flirting with open source for years as a way to improve software quality and cut costs, has finally burst the dam on Defense-related open-source adoption with Forge.mil, an open-source code repository based on Sourceforge.

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The secret to a more secure and cost effective government is through open source technologies and products.

The claim comes from one of Silicon Valley’s most respected business leaders Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems.

He revealed he has been asked to prepare a paper on the subject for the new administration.

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Healthcare IT News reports that it is now on a Free/Open Source CMS: NEW GLOUCESTER, ME – Pop the hood on our new Web site and you’ll find one very powerful engine. It’s called Drupal, a free, open-source platform that powers all of our content entry. As many healthcare IT workers know, the value of open-source solutions isn’t just the (lack of) price tag: it’s the fact that the products are user-developed, community-tested and constantly improved.

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Congressman Pete Stark (D-Calif) has introduced H.R. 6898 full text of the bill here
which takes a strong stance on Open Source and VistA, calling specifically for an Open Source health information network if possible based upon existing systems such as Veterans Affairs VistA.

Information Week is reporting. “A federal appeals court has struck down a lower court ruling that found that open source copyrights may not be legally enforceable if they’re licensed under terms that are “intentionally broad.” Ruling on an appeal brought by software developer Robert Jacobsen, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said Wednesday that open source users that do not comply with the software’s strict licensing terms can, in fact, be sued for copyright infringement — even if the software is free…” Thanks to Will Ross for this link.

North Carolina Mental Health is asking for (large download of RFP pdf) Open Source only Veterans Affairs VistA proposals according to Modern Healthcare (registration required): “North Carolina’s Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services Division has issued a request for proposals to vendors to install a commercially supported, open-source version of the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, or VistA, clinical information system at its three hospitals and three clinics.

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The Connecting California to Improve Patient Care in 2008 conference will occur on Friday July 18, 2008 — 9:00 A.M. to 4:15 P.M. Ukiah Valley Conference Center, 200 S. School St., Ukiah, California Conference Cost – $35 (includes lunch). This looks like one of those small conferences that end up becoming very important.