Feds Eye Open Source Model for Medical Data Systems

On a mission to modernize, the US government is eyeing an Internet-based healthcare system for easy sharing of health related data between doctors, medical institutions and patients. As part of this initiative, the government hopes to move all medical records onlinewhere doctors can quickly and securely access them.

...Interestingly, the government chose an open source approach by asking several dozen health information technology companies to organize an initiative called the Direct Project. This project "was created to specify a simple, secure, scalable, standards-based way for participants to send authenticated, encrypted health information directly to known, trusted recipients over the Internet."