The health care sector is set for a technology-driven transformation as the federal government pushes adoption of electronic health records and pursues national health information exchange. Hardly surprising, the Open Source Convention (OSCON) has a health care track. But will health care IT consultants embrace open source? Here's an overview.

Today's Report of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission, "A Healthier Future For All Australians: Final Report," makes the e-health system a central plank in the future of health management in Australia.

The system that Midland adopted is based on software originally written by doctors for doctors at the Veterans Health Administration, and it is what's called "open source,"

"If you care about FOSS generally, I need you to show up at the HIMSS meeting. If you care about FOSS in Health IT, it is especially important that you be there. I believe that FOSS is the only real hope for untangling the mess that is Health IT." - interview with Fred Trotter

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am huge fan of Linux and open source. This is perhaps why I get so frustrated with the US health care industry and its general lack of interoperability. I could use many standards as an example, however, for this discussion I’m using the ASTM Continuity of Care Record (CCR) as an example.

A stark future awaits American health care if the Veterans Affairs (VA) system and Cerner is allowed to go forward with announced plans to replace the VA's successful public domain laboratory software, in need of update, with a proprietary one.

For three health care centers, the challenge was clear: Find a way to improve internal communications by expanding e-mail accounts to all employees, including doctors, nurses, security staffers and dietary workers, without breaking their IT budgets.

Over at my health care blog, I’m asking whether open source is the cure for what ails health care IT.

Health is personal. Health Care is not. The term is a euphemism for Condition Treatment, and it's not about patients. It's about systems, and most of those are both proprietary and closed.