Healthcare Industry Welcomes Open Source TechnologyJuly 08, 2009
By Amy Tierney TMCnet Web Editor
No one who covers IT and IP communications is surprised that the use of open source technology is increasing, as more organizations find ways to leverage developers' for flexible, and often cost-effective solutions. And recently, there seems to be growing interest in the healthcare industry in particular.
For example, the Open Health Tools Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates for open source healthcare, reportedly approved a new project to develop server-based technology that would allow interoperability among different health information systems. The group launched the effort to build standards-based "Health Information Exchanges."
The project, which rolled out in beta form in February, is designed to reduce the cost of interoperability components, which have led to significant cost barriers for the HIEs in their quest to develop standards-based solutions, according to a ChiroEco report.
Open Health Tools is a joint effort between national health agencies, major health care providers, researchers, academics, international standards bodies, and companies from Australia, Canada and the United States, as well as the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe. Its goal is to develop healthcare IT products and services and provide software tools and components that boost the implementation of electronic health information interoperability platforms to improve patient care and access to electronic health records.
Misys Open Source Solutions, a division of Misys plc, is overseeing the project and built server-side components to integrate healthcare enterprise profiles. That initiative is designed to improve the way computer systems in the healthcare field share information. As part of its first task, Misys Open Source Solutions planned to address the profiles for patient identifier cross-referencing and patient demographics query, the company said.
According to a study by Talend, a provider of open source data integration solutions, respondents cited ease of use (59 percent) and performance (53.9 percent) are the top two criteria for implementing open source data integration solutions.
While, there appears to be a greater acceptance of open source software, companies have a few hurdles to overcome with the technology. As TMCnet reported, a recent survey by OpenLogic, a firm that sells enterprise open source software, found that 60 percent of enterprises using open source lack effective means to track what open source software is installed.
According to the study, 18 percent of respondents said they preferred open source software, while 41 percent said they think open source software is "on equal footing" with proprietary software. However, the majority of respondents said they have no automated way to track what open source software is used inside their organization because they don't have formal inventory processes, or because they rely on self-reporting, TMCnet reported. |
发表于 2009-7-10 07:28:10
