Buy EHR vs Build EHR

I’ve long had an interest in the topic of when hospitals chose to buy their EHR software versus build their EHR software. In fact, we’ve written multiple times on the subject including Anne Zieger’s piece on “Some Hospitals Still Choosing To Build Own EMR“.

With this as background, I was really intrigued by Dr. Edmund Billings’ blog post looking at how open source EHR is the best of both buy and build worlds. Here’s a good section of his article which frames the debate:

In a Buy vs. Build decision, the key drivers are control and cost. Do you have control over your system at a cost you can afford? The decision calculus then shifts to ownership on two levels: First, can we have true ownership of our solution and make it work ourselves? Second, is the total cost of ownership economically sustainable?