Report Urges Feds To Push Open-Source Solutions

While there have been successes and failures in the deployment of open-source health information technology by federally supported safety net healthcare organizations, the federal government could and should do more to ensure more frequent successes, according to an HHS-funded report.

Open-source electronic health records have been seen as a cheaper solution for financially strapped indigent-care providers.

The study of the efficacy of open source was mandated by the HITECH provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The biggest obstacle to implementing health IT in a safety net healthcare setting—either developed by open source or proprietary technology vendors—is a lack of money, the research team from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago concluded. The study results were published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.