– fordi tiden kræver et MODSPIL

25. Oct 2005

Patientjournaler FINDES faktisk som Open Source

 
Tidligere på dagen skrev jeg om, hvordan miséren om de nyudviklede patientjournaler, som nu må smides væk, er et eksempel på, at det offentlige altid bør satse på fri/open source software, især ved nyudvikling.

Citizen Dane gnider nu salt i såret ved at gøre opmærksom på, at der rent faktisk findes et patientjournalsystem, der ikke alene er gratis, men også er Open Source - og som man kunne have bygget videre på i et fællesdansk journalsystem!

Citizen Dane citerede tidligere fra Washington Monthly:
Developed at taxpayer expense, the VistA program is available for free to anyone who cares to download it off the Internet. The link is to a demo, but the complete software is nonetheless available. You can try it out yourself by going to http://www1.va.gov/CPRSdemo/. Not surprisingly, it is currently being used by public health care systems in Finland, Germany, and Nigeria. There is even an Arabic language version up and running in Egypt. Yet VHA officials say they are unaware of any private health care system in the United States that uses the software. Instead, most systems are still drowning in paper, or else just starting to experiment with far more primitive information technologies.
Præcis ligesom i Danmark, kunne man sige!

Der findes også et internationalt Open Source-projekt baseret på VistA, der kaldes WorldVistA.

På sin hjemmeside beskriver dette projekt sig selv således:
WorldVistA seeks to make healthcare information technology more affordable and more widely available worldwide. In particular, WorldVistA is focused on further developing and supporting the growing global VistA community.

WorldVistA was formed to extend and improve the VistA health information system for use outside of its original setting. The system was developed by the U.S. government for use in its veterans' hospitals and outpatient clinics. WorldVistA has a number of development efforts aimed at adding new software modules such as pediatrics, obstetrics, and other functions not used in the veterans' healthcare setting.
Dette projekt kunne det danske patientjournalsystem have været koblet på fra starten - og således kunne man have taget udgangspunkt i et gratis stort set færdigt system, der blot skulle tilpasses, og som utvivlsomt vil udvikle sig til en vigtig international standard.

Hvis et bedre journalsystem kan redde et menneskeliv eller to, gør det jo mildest talt heller ikke noget.

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