Utah Hospital Adopting OpenVista

OpenVista continues to garner strength with the announcement today by Blue Mountain Hospital, an 11-bed hospital in Blanding, Utah. This Utah hospital has signed the plans to implement an EMR system. The system will be OpenVista, utilizing MedSphere as the implementation team. Smaller hospitals, clinics, and health organizations across the country are continuing to see the value in the open source health systems with them being cost effective and increasingly more reliable. Check out the article.

Dispelling the Software Myth

Ben Mehling of MedSphere.org responds to an article recently published by the Long Island Press. Besides the article representing a sound chronological history of OpenVista, Ben touches on the interesting point of the existence of a software pricing myth. The myth is that many believe that the more expensive the software, the better it will be. Those that buy cheaper software options are cutting corners and jeopardizing quality. This mentality, though, extends far beyond software products to consumer products in general. Prices are correlated with a level of quality. The better or higher level of quality, the more expensive the good will be.

However, with the advent of the open source movement, this consumer product pricing scheme is no longer valid. Some of the best software systems (e.g. Linux, OpenVista) are free. This is hard for many still to swallow. Older generations simply were not raised with this mindset, so many of the leaders today are pushing back from open source simply because of this contradictory pricing mentality.

It will only take a few successful open source implementations, though, to dispel this pricing myth. With Linux systems being used in university science labs to OpenVista being implemented with the VA, we have the successful implementation examples today. Therefore, it is exciting to be able to be a part of a distinct shift in the years to come of how we view the pricing of healthcare systems and consumer products in general.