Medsphere has posted the position for CTO on LinkedIn. From the post:
Chief Technology Officer
The CTO will drive the company’s technology vision, strategy and execution for all product lines. This encompasses setting strategic direction, vision, standards and product architecture; identification of new technology solutions and partnerships, including strategy for Open Source in Healthcare.
Press Release: Medsphere Releases Code for Development Testing Automation Framework
‘Strongwind’ Enhances Software Quality, Supports Open Source Community
ALISO VIEJO, California, October 30, 2007 – Medsphere Systems Corporation
today announced the release of code for a user interface test automation
framework that enables developers to create automated quality assurance
scripts to test features of user interface applications. Dubbed Strongwind,
this new tool developed by Medsphere engineers has improved the process of
testing updates and enhancements of Medsphere’s OpenVista electronic health
record (EHR), a commercial version of the U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs’ VistA solution. Medsphere is now making the testing platform
available under the GNU General Public License (GPL) to assist third-party
developers in delivering quality applications.
Scott Shreeve says farewell to Medsphere: ‘…Last Thursday, we finalized a mutual settlement agreement with Medsphere. It took five hundred and four days after being drawn into the campaign to reach this conclusion. To us, this war was always about principles, while to others it was “just business”. In the end, all parties had heard and seen and spent enough.
Looking back on my 5 1/2 year experience at Medsphere, the only thing I can say is:
[cntrl][alt][delete]…’
Press Release: Medsphere Systems Corporation today announced that all legal disputes involving the company and Steve and Scott Shreeve have been settled and resolved by mutual agreement of the parties.
Medsphere looks forward to continuing the recent growth and development of the company. In recent months, Medsphere has signed four new contracts for the implementation of OpenVista, the company’s comprehensive open source electronic health record (EHR) based on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) VistA solution. The company recently also announced the appointment of Michael J. Doyle to the position of President and Chief Executive Officer.
Press Release: Medsphere Systems Corporation, the leading commercial provider of open source-based electronic health record (EHR) systems and services, today announced an agreement to implement its OpenVista(R) EHR platform at Century
City Doctors Hospital (CCDH) in Los Angeles. The 120-bed acute care facility, located in the west side business district adjacent to Beverly Hills, is implementing the OpenVista platform as part of an integrated information systems initiative established by the physician group that acquired, renovated, and opened the hospital in 2005.
According to the all-knowing (or pretty darn close) Tim posting at HIStalk “Frank Pecaitis and Medsphere have parted ways”. Apparently Pecaitis now works for GE. From what I can tell. Frank Pecaitis was the last of the old-guard leadership still active at Medsphere. Modern Healthcare already broke the story that Ken Kizer is leaving Medsphere “when a successor is found” which apparently has not happened yet. Who is left at Medsphere? This is exactly what I had hoped to prevent: An ongoing pointless lawsuit, leaving the two brother founders twiddling their thumbs, and a company that is tearing itself apart.
According to Modern Physician has an article about: Physician-executive Kenneth Kizer will step down as the chairman of the board and chief executive officer of healthcare information technology developer Medsphere Systems, Aliso Viejo, Calif., as soon as a corporate search, now under way, identifies a successor, Kizer confirmed today. Kizer said, “The basic ethos of open source fits healthcare. And healthcare has this infinite need for customizing and tailoring at the sharp end. Some doc wants a program for this or some doc wants a disease registry for that and you just can’t get that with proprietary (software), at least not quickly and cheaply. I see open source as the disruptive technology in healthcare IT.”
More major news from the 2007 HIMSS conference: ‘NEW ORLEANS, LA (HIMSS07 Conference, February 26, 2007) – Medsphere Systems Corporation today announced the release of the source code for its OpenVista� electronic health record (EHR) platform in new server and client-side community editions. OpenVista is a commercial implementation of the highly regarded VistA EHR system developed by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. The announcement marks the launch of Medsphere’s efforts to coalesce an open source community around its platform and accelerate EHR adoptions by providing a low-cost VistA-based alternative with opportunities for collaborative development…’ Medsphere has also seemed to have launched medsphere.org as well as released to sourceforge with a GPL license.
Information Week has an article
entitled: ‘How To Tell The Open Source Winners From The Losers’ and prominently features Medsphere’s OpenVistA� as being ‘on the bubble’ and some factual errors regarding the troubled software: ‘…OpenVista was posted on SourceForge on June 6. It wasn’t a big surprise; the posting had been promised several times by Medsphere, a company founded to commercialize OpenVista. But things unraveled quickly. Within four months, Medsphere sued co-founder and CTO Steve Shreeve, who was responsible for the posting. In a complaint filed in Superior Court of Orange County, Calif., Medsphere charged that Shreeve and his older brother, Scott, Medsphere’s chief medical officer at the time, had breached their fiduciary duty as directors, violated confidentiality agreements, and caused the company to suffer $50 million in damages. CEO Ken Kizer and board members contend that the Shreeves should have held a meeting before posting OpenVista to review what code would be released…’
Despite Medsphere’s litigation issues and not keeping its promises to open source its products, the company appears to be generating new business and is also hiring.