AT&T Tech Support 360Better 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.
Matt Asay is general manager of the Americas and vice president of business development at Alfresco, and has nearly a decade of operational experience with commercial open source and regularly speaks and publishes on open-source business strategy. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
