> > > > Yes, I have talked to Mr.Farnham , and others in VITL. My only conclusion > is that they have a different agenda, and there seems to be a high > resistance and lack of motivation for looking at other > > disruptive models. > > How would you characterize their agenda, then? >
Follow the money trail. There isn't (the same level) of money to be made in FOSS. The whole Health Information Exchange (HIE) ecosystem is built on this "non-openness". http://www.cchit.org/ is one such example of this "non-openness". While CCHIT is inherently a standards board, they are presented as a "best practices" group. Many State organizations (VITL included) say "HAI CCHIT, lets integrate that" without looking at exactly what they are doing. A product that wishes to be CCHIT certified has to pay something on the order of $15k to be certified to a specific year's CCHIT model, and any major changes to the application mean it needs to be recertified. This kills the "release early release often" model many FOSS projects work under. An OpenEMR/EHR system to be seen as respectable to VITL would need this CCHIT certification. It sets a high bar to play ball. VITL, and other "EHR/EMR" groups are all playing a very exclusive game of kickball where the stakes are high to even get onto the field. Even reasonable commercial EMR's are being forced to sell to larger organizations because they simply cannot get into the game. VITL is simply a process for the state government to funnel money to corporate EMR vendors -- nothing more nothing less. Stan
