The Open Source Software (OSS) Movement Get’s Medical Help - Open Source Software Up the Stack

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October 24, 2007
The Open Source Software (OSS) Movement Get’s Medical Help

As discussed often in this blogspace, the real indicator of the long term health of the open source software (OSS) movement will involve the applications space (as in collaborative, content, analytical, ERP-plus and personal-productivity software). As of late 2007, OSS is mostly about operating infrastructure, mid-stack software and to a lesser extent data and database management.

So it is interesting that healthcare delivery applications are tending to lead the way. Back in February, leading healthcare delivery application provider McKesson and Red Hat announced the Red Hat Enterprise Healthcare Platform. It consisted of McKesson’s clinical applications prepackaged with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and JBoss middleware, providing a very cost effective package available via the Red Hat Network. But the McKesson software itself was not open sourced.

On October 24, 2007, Misys plc, also a healthcare delivery application software and services provider (but more involved with insurance and banking application development outside the United States), took it a step further. Misys said it was making its Misys Connect healthcare solution available to the OSS development community. It said “Misys Open Source Solutions, a division of Misys plc, was established to create and drive innovation in the marketplace; using open source to move toward open standards is a great step forward.”

I agree with the step forward. The PR release is loaded with celebrity quotes from the likes of Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and founder of the Center for Health Transformation (CHT), and Ronald W. Hovsepian, President and CEO of Novell Inc. (as in the leading Linux competitor to Red Hat). So I think the announcement is more PR than anything else. Misys Connect is a data-sharing application and only one of a dozen Misys applications, none of which were similarly released. But if OSS is going to take off, it needs to do it in the applications space and you have to start somewhere.