What Do The Internet And Electronic Health Records Have In Common?

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama cited computer chips and the Internet as examples of technologies that were originally funded by the government, and later unleashed new industries. 

Another piece of technology that could have been co-opted by the private sector, but unfortunately hasn’t is an open source electronic health record (EHR) called VistA that the government developed 15 years ago at a cost of $8 billion.

Obama briefly mentioned veterans being able to download their electronic medical records. Not the rest of us. That’s because veterans use VistA.