In developed countries, healthcare workers represent a significant proportion of the working population. For example, in the United Kingdom, more than 1 million people work for the National Health Service, a publicly funded healthcare system. Medical software therefore has a huge market to tap.

Gnumed is an open source management tool for medical practices. If your practice (or a practice you do IT for) is in need of an electronic record-keeping system, and you do not want to have to shell out your entire IT budget for a proprietary solution, Gnumed might be the perfect tool for you.

Without a ban on federal money for purchasing proprietary Electronic Medical Record software and requirements for licenses such as the Affero General Public License that safeguard public rights and ensures sustainability, we will become a nation of renters of poorly performing health IT software infrastructure that taxpayers paid dearly for, and will pay for again and again."

PatientOS is an Open Source EMR for Hospitals, Physician Offices and other Healthcare Facilities. Version 0.85 brings the following features:

- All new look and feel.
- Role based security.
- Multi-facility logic.
- Extensive tool and chart enhancements.
- Progress Notes
- Custom physician documentation
- Detailed allergy, symptom, diagnosis, problem lists.

The healthcare services company moved 50 of its 70 applications to Linux over the last two years and will complete the process with the remaining 20 within a year or two.

In 2004, health care software vendor McKesson Provider Technologies began focusing on ways to cut IT costs for customers, including hospitals and medical offices. The cure for IT cost bloat: moving many of McKesson's medical software applications to Linux, which could then be used on less expensive commodity hardware instead of expensive mainframes.

A Canadian alternative to the much talked about "one hundred dollar laptop" is making the rounds of the region in the hope of winning support from governments by offering a different solution to bridge the digital divide.