OSEHRA 2014: Taking The Pulse Of The Open Health IT At The OSEHRA Open Source Summit

Earlier this month, the 2014 OSEHRA Open Source Summit took place in Bethesda, MD, gathering global leaders in both public and private health IT to discuss the future of electronic health records (EHR) and open source initiatives in health care. This three-day conference is hosted by OSEHRA, the Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance, which was formed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to support the open source community around its VistA EHR – the largest open source EHR in the U.S.  I spoke with OSEHRA President and CEO Dr. Seong K. Mun about the activity that took place at this month’s event and the evolving role of open source within health IT.

Q: The OSEHRA Open Source Summit has grown significantly over the past few years. This year you hosted more speakers and sessions than ever before. In what other ways do you see the conference growing?

Dr. Mun: This is our third OSEHRA Open Source Summit and there are several notable things that came out of this conference. We’re dealing with the private sector, as well as government.  Often times, people in government are hesitant to discuss things openly and aren’t sure how they should work with the open source community. However, we’ve been able to bring technical experts and government leaders together to foster conversations around what kind of projects the government is pursuing in the future, how open source should be managed, and how big problems should be solved...