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One company, Software Revolution, claims that the MUMPS-based VistA code could be converted to Java at a cost of $125 million. If even remotely true, that could well prove to be a much smarter investment than $20 billion in stimulus money. Heck,Discount North Face Shoes, given how easily billions are being spent in Washington today,ugg usa, $125 million is pocket change.

At first glance, there is none. VistA works, and works well, particularly when packaged and delivered by companies like Medsphere, perhaps the most prominent advocate for the open-source health care ERP system.

It just needs to shake the MUMPS out.

Better quality health care at a much lower price. What’s the punchline?

This bottom-up development effort appears to be working: the VA hospital system consistently delivers superior care at less cost, as noted by ZDNet. As a volunteer at my local VA hospital, I get to see it firsthand.

Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay.

VistA was developed by the U.S. Veterans Administration and the medical professionals involved in its extensive hospital network. Read: doctors developing software for other doctors.

Open source might prove to be the wrong answer to the health care mess. But given the VA’s success with VistA, President Obama should be spending pennies on the stimulus dollar with VistA before he looks elsewhere for solutions. It’s already written. By all accounts, it works well.

It’s already paid for.

Open source, not $19 billion, may be best health care stimulus

The federal economic stimulus package provides $19 billion to upgrade the U.S. health care system to digital records. It’s a nice gesture, but the U.S. federal government has already developed a robust medical ERP system that could significantly improve U.S. health care. It’s called VistA. It’s open source.

There are other open-source answers to the U.S. health care problem, including the federal Connect project and Axial Exchange,ugg store usa, which was set up by former Red Hat executives to commercialize these federal efforts. But none is more proven than VistA, which has successfully served U.S. veterans for many years.

Scratch the surface, however, and you quickly run into a major problem with VistA: MUMPS (Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System). MUMPS is the archaic programming language in which VistA was written, and which perpetuates its inflexible architecture. Though some suggest the specialized knowledge needed to program in MUMPS is a selling point, let’s put it this way: in the programming universe filled with PHP, Java, .Net, and other constellations of programmers, MUMPS is like a single Red Dwarf. It’s not going anywhere except into oblivion. This entry was posted on 星期一, 03月 8th, 2010 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Liningblog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. Comments are closed.