lock-in software

See the following -

Biased Buyers Blocking Open Source

Simon Phipps | Computerworld | August 6, 2012

A recent report shows that 17% of ICT procurement across Europe is biased, with the UK the 4th most common offender. Read More »

Class action lawsuit in Miami-Dade targets Allscripts

Brian Bandell | Business Journal | January 3, 2013

A lawsuit filed in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court seeks class action status for doctors who use the MyWay electronic health records (EHR) from Allscripts Healthcare Solutions. Panama City-based Pain Clinic of Northwest FL filed a purported class action lawsuit on Dec. 20 against Chicago-based Allscripts (NASDAQ: MDRX). It says that about 5,000 small group physicians were sold MyWay from 2009 until late last year, when the company stopped supporting the product... Read More »

EHR Systems & Cost Transparency in the Healthcare Industry

Cost transparency is obviously a big issue in the healthcare industry. Whether it’s the amazing variation in costs hospitals charge patients for similar medical procedures, or the costs associated with acquiring and implementing an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system for a hospital - Why are all these costs often carefully hidden?  Is there something special about the healthcare industry that says – "Let's not talk about how much things really cost." Apparently, many industry leaders must feel that hospitals boards and patients have no need to know this information. Read More »

EHRs: Buy vs. Build, or the Best of Both

In the electronic health record (EHR) market, even though an enterprise solution is not an operating system, the parallels are clear. Healthcare organizations use expensive and complex proprietary systems that are difficult to maintain.  The leading systems have prohibitive total costs of ownership. Ownership is undermined by vendor lock. The most important and valuable enhancements are held back for the next chargeable upgrade.  Lack of interoperability is a business model.

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Former healthcare CEO equates Epic customers, hostages

Kyle Murphy | EHR Intelligence | October 18, 2012

Former CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess, Paul Levy has noticed some disturbing similarities between the characteristics of Stockholm syndrome and the attitudes of customers of the Epic Systems toward to the electronic health record (EHR) vendor. Read More »

HIMSS13: A Fork in the Road - How Patients & Payment Are Forcing 'Open' Health IT

Jane Sarasohn-Kahn | iHealthBeat | March 11, 2013

This year feels like a fork in the road at HIMSS13, with disruptive forces of patients, digital health, mobility and open standards driving innovation and renewed energy at the annual conference...Without transparency (in health IT and health finance) and data liquidity, bending the cost curve will continue to elude the U.S. health system. At the recently concluded annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference in New Orleans, 34,696 got to experience a yin and yang vibe that embodies the disruption that the health care IT industry is undergoing. That is, the full-on face-off between developers of health IT that have been long-closed to data liquidity and those vendors innovating on open standards and cloud-based platforms. Read More »

Open source EHRs empower America's community health centers

How the economics of open source make sense for large scale, national healthcare infrastructure projects. A recent study  published by the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, examined "the use of open source electronic health records within the federal safety net."

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The Value of EHR Interoperability that Money Can't Buy

There seems to be something missing in our national debate about health care and the use of health information technologies (IT) in this marketplace. Do we want a more 'open' healthy society, or a more closed system? What role should markets play in public health and medical sociology? How do we decide which EHR solutions to acquire? Should we be looking more closely at open source alternatives versus proprietary programs. Should money, quality of care, or some other non-market values determine what's best for the patient? This cuts to the heart of the debate. Consider the hospital that chooses to not pay an expensive proprietary EHR vendor for the enhanced code required by a doctor in order to get the latest real time knowledge for treating a patient's disease.

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VistA and Epic: A Tale of Two Systems

Over the last few weeks, access to VA health care for veterans has been all over the news.  At the same time, the DoD is moving to procure a replacement EHR system.  So it seems there is no time like the present to review a recent RAND case studies report entitled “Redirecting Innovation in U.S. Health Care: Options to Decrease Spending and Increase Value.” The case studies include a chapter comparing America’s two most broadly deployed EHRs: The VA’s VistA and Epic.

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When EMR Companies Muzzle Doctors

Westby G. Fisher | Blogspot: Dr. Wes | February 20, 2013

It started out as a satire about electronic medical records posted as a computer game review by an electrophysiologist in Kentucky.  The problem was, it contained real screenshots of a real EMR that highlighted certain (how do we say it nicely?) quirks of the software...

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