Better healthcare via open source, Harvard med school CIO argues

In a clear indicator that open source is having an impact well beyond software, Harvard Medical School's CIO, Dr. John Halamka, recently went on the record at the Red Hat Summit arguing that open source points the way to better healthcare. In this, however, he wasn't talking about software per se, but rather about the community approach to tackling what appears to be a gargantuan problem:

Online medical records.

This seems like an easy task, right? Scan them in and save the documents online. Google Health is doing it, right? How hard can it be?

Very hard, it turns out. But open source provides some clues as to how to resolve the issue, as Dr. Halamka suggests:

Healthcare interoperability requires open standards, developed in a transparent way, by a community. It requires reusable components and tools which accelerate technical connectivity and data sharing. The Open Source movement embraces all these principles....[S]o I welcome their contributions to the work connecting payers, providers and patients.

How do you manage a disparate group of self-interested actors? Open source. How do you take care of breaking up the overarching task into bite-sized pieces? Open source. How do you get US healthcare records online? Open source, according to one of the experts in the business.

[lmasanti]

(Disclaimer: I'm not born in the USA, not a US citizen nor a resident.)
When someone ask for the "Silver Bullet" (a.k.a. open software) to solve a problem (US health care costs) I'm afraid.
Health care is --IMHO-- deeper rooted than the Maffia. It needs a far too more aggresive effort.

I do remember JFK telling the world: "By the end of the decade we will put a man on the Moon".
To solve health care problems I think you need that kind of epic and effort.

[tmcmurph]

How about making all the medical information out there available to people? Some review WITHOUT ties to the pharmacological companies looking at ALL available treatments and rating them as to safety and effectiveness? You know what the FDA is supposed to do but doesn't.

www.lef.org

[citizencontact]

This is issue has personal relevance since I have to apportion over 20-40 pills daily for a sick relative. There should have been a simple online system for helping manage this. The Google Health system API makes this more likely (there is already one application that does this, though seems very buggy. Open standards and open source would make this effort much better.

However, the United States makes this effort problematic by not having a comprehensive and universal health care system. Since health information is used to deny health care and employment (whether legal or not, since there is no guarantee which developed societies have as a given), the incentives run counter to normal networked systems and applications.

This is hard to prove in the abstract, but should become apparent if you understand the nature of networks that grow in power as they reach 100% of the potential audience and the analogous situation that a society is healthier person by person as closer to 100% is given the best care (e.g. vaccines, etc).

Nonetheless, we should support the effort of Dr. John Halamka, because by moving ahead on this open standards/source effort that may help explain the 100% is best rule for networks in the context of health care.

[seanupton]

Matt, have you been reading Doc Searls' blog posts of late or his latest article: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/patient-platform -- interesting in how closely this is related.

[SarahJanesDad]

When you get a moment, you should look at what we are doing at The Sarah Jane Brain Foundation (www.TheBrainProject.org).

For the first time in medical history, all of someone's medical records are available using Open Source Principles.