A recent study of safety net clinics adopting open source electronic health records found that althoughthe average cost of an open source program was 30 percent to 60 percent lower than that of a similar commercial EHR system, several obstacles remain. The main challenges to increased adoption, according tothe University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, are the cost of modification and training and a lack of internal expertise to customize the systems.
Next month, technical and business executives working to improve users’ success with open source EHRs will meet in Bethesda, Md., at the Second Annual Open Source EHR Summit & Workshop put on by the Open Source Electronic Health Records Agent (OSEHRA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating innovation in electronic health record software. The OSEHRA community has grown to more than 2,300 members.
By bringing together a community of software developers, clinicians, business leaders and other practitioners, OSEHRA hopes to further the momentum of open source in the private and public sectors. OSEHRA hosts software repositories for applications such as the Department of Veterans Affairs' VistA electronic health record.
The summit will feature more than 35 panelists and speakers, including Andrew Aitken, founder and managing partner of the Olliance Group; John Halamka, M.D.,CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; and Kenneth Kizer, M.D., who heads up the California health information exchange organization,California Health eQuality (CHeQ).
For more information about the conference, go to www.osehra.org.
