‘Holy Grail’ in open source?
Open-source devotee Fred Trotter reports today that ClearHealth apparently has reached what he calls the “Holy Grail of open-source medical informatics”: a Web-based version of CPRS, the user interface for the Veterans Health Administration’s vaunted VistA system.
ClearHealth today has posted screen shots of the beta version of what it calls WebVista. I’m not a techie, I’m not well-versed in open source. Is this is a big deal? Someone please tell me.
Also, someone please tell ClearHealth that there has not been a “Veterans Administration” since 1989. It’s called the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Yes I do believe it’s an important step in the right direction of bringing healthcare IT up to the level of other information systems available.Open sources allows users to adapt and enhance applications without the bureaucratic steps required to do so today.It will also ease the integration of various systems and allow for the system users to choose to integrate their systems rather than to nag their vendors (which will have to measure all adaptations in terms of $$$ divided by number of users they can sell it to).I am a firm believer in open source in the health sector, but it is not a solution. It’s only a part of a solution.Open source software can still be bad software and there is also the issue that Open source isn’t necessary Open source (i.e. there is no clear cut definition of what it constitutes).