Comments on: Ken Kizer, CEO of Medsphere and former top VA official, pitches open source medical software to Congress

By: The Medical Blog Network

The Medical Blog Network — Sat, 27 May 2006 12:53:40 +0000

Blog Carnivals: Announcing an Automated Submission System. Kickoff with TMBN hosting of HWR (6/1) and Grand Rounds (6/6).

In anticipation of TMBN hosting of the leading medblog carnivals, Health Wonk Review on 6/1 and Grand Rounds on 6/6, we have a major service update. In fact a real trifecta:

Blog Carnival Management: Automated system for managing entry submissions to blo

By: Will Oliver

Will Oliver — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 14:45:24 +0000

I do not believe the government will embrace opensource, in the short term, for one simple reason. The lobbyists. McKesson and Cerner pour millions into campaign funding to make sure their interested are driven home. I do not believe the Vista movement would have gained the ground it has without the VC funds pouring in from Medsphere. Ken is doing the same thing the other venders do. He’s protecting his interests. Unfortunately, he’s up against some big players with deep pockets.

As for TCO, opensource and vendor apps are about even in the rest of the world. In healthcare, at least initially, I would expect opensource TCO to be a bit higher. Until the opensource healthcare community builds, hospitals would be shifting licensing fees to consulting fees. Don’t get me wrong, I think the opensource movement is going to take off in the next 6-7 years. Vendors closed door policy on software makes Vista’s openness very attractive.

Will Oliver
http://www.hitsmit.com – Your HIT news
http://www.healthcareitforum.com – Your HIT community

By: dkruglyak

dkruglyak — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 03:31:22 +0000

I think lack of licensing fees is only one of the benefits of open source.

A far more important point is collaborative software development, through the power of community. When it works, this means greater software quality and never needing another source code escrow clause. Plus things like sharing of best practice processes, templates, etc.etc.etc. Things that are taken for granted in Linux-land but are barely known in health IT. How many times different IT departments end up doing the same HL7 interface over and over again?

The real viability of open source health IT will be tested by whether a viable development community with real spirit of collaboration can emerge.

By: Shahid N. Shah

Shahid N. Shah — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 15:07:11 +0000

Great points — you’re absolutely right that almost all the work in the real world is in deployment and integration (not licensing). Perhaps you and I could team up on some articles and publish them?

By: Clickrich

Clickrich — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 15:05:41 +0000

I think it would be more valuable to make a cultural shift in how we manage integration. It is not about trying to put two systems together so you can’t see the join. It is about managing the join. The jkoin could be a thing of technical beauty! The join has traditionally fallen between vendors, between organisations and between project managers. Therefore, no-one is responsible for it and it is treated as a something to do at the end of two workstreams- to knit them together.
We need to embrace integration and make that the centre of our world rather than putting it on the periphery.
This is about bad IT management rather than choice of technology.
Software licensing is not irrelevent, but it should be less than 20% of a major IT programme and for every article, blog or comment I see on sound IT delivery practice, I see a dozen on open source licensing.

By: Shahid N. Shah

Shahid N. Shah — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 13:06:41 +0000

Clickrich — i couldn’t agree more. The reason I blogged about this testimony is to let everyone see what was said before congress. I, too, have some fear about Congress taking action based on this viewpoint alone but I can’t imagine the other vendors are sitting still .

But, as far as licensing costs, there is some merit that billions could be saved. Think about the fact that it cost VA billions (alone) to build out VISTA and it’s easy to see that the government (not industry) easily shells out billions to do software development. If by using open source billions are instead spent on deployment and integration we may make some progress.

By: Clickrich

Clickrich — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 13:00:14 +0000

“Saving billions of dollars in licensing fees alone over the next 10 years”. Alone? Licensing is probably the ONLY area of total cost of ownership where savings will be made in open source IT. I’d like the billions substantiated, but taking that as read as being $2bn… and spread over the USA’s 6,007 medical centres (exc military and veteran hospitals) this is just over 30k per annum per centre. It wouldn’t take many man hours per site in ALL the other areas of cost of ownership to put those savings into the shade. I fear Congress making decisions on these sweeping statements.