After a significant amount of uncertainty surrounding its future/direction as an open source company, Medsphere has gone live with a beta version of their website for the OpenVista open source community. Since writing about some of the legal turmoil Medsphere was experiencing a while back, I hadn't heard any official or unofficial word about what was happening regarding that particular situation. However, after the company reported several successful implementations during January and February of this year, questions regarding the progress of efforts to build a publicly visible open source reference point were once again relevant. Still, my personal efforts to get in contact with a representative from the company proved unsuccessful, so I was actually surprised when I got wind of an open source release of new client and server side editions for its OpenVista® electronic health record (EHR) platform.
It's good to see the company follow through with its originally stated strategy to assemble an open source community around its platform that will aid EHR adoptions. What's even more interesting is that OpenVista is actually a 'commercial implementation' of the VistA EHR system developed by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) and is in use at more than 800 outpatient facilities across the VA. VistA software is already in the public domain, and is available from the VA without charge under the Freedom of Information Act. In other words, Medsphere isn't just banking on the value of open source code that an embrace of the open source model provides, they obviously recognize the value of having a participating community around the code. As it stands OpenVista's new community editions include enhancements made to VistA source code which extends its use outside the VA as well as an updated user interface [see screenshots].
Medsphere is looking to feed community borne OpenVista enhancements into Medsphere's commercial editions, in addition to the hands of various hospitals and health care providers towards driving EHR deployments. It also looks like both the OpenVista Clinical Information System (CIS) and the OpenVista Server will be available under their Medsphere Public License (MSPL) version 1.0 and GPLv2. It's going to be important that Medsphere makes it clear what MSPL means, especially to those most likely to want to adapt/redistribute OpenVista -- in order to make adoption as seamless as possible. I've always been in favor of simplified, plain English narratives that accompany the actual license terms. Of course, it's always critical to have any license reviewed by a lawyer before proceeding, but it helps if front line technology folks who touch it first can get the gist of what it's saying.
Medsphere has taken several steps in the direction of establishing a foothold in the open source domain with a respectable first set of moves. It will be interesting to see how much of the existing VistA community will be interested in jumping on the OpenVista bandwagon now that it's open under the GPL [and MSPL]. The OpenVista community might receive a sizeable participation boost from individuals who have parallel branches of VistA code and are willing to provide further add-on features that OpenVista doesn't yet have. Either way, I'll be tracking it's progress going forward.
Technorati Tags: Medsphere | open source software | VistA EHR | OpenVista
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