Open Source EHRs: Will They Support Clinical Data Needs of the Future? (Part 1 of 2)

Andy OramOpen source software missed out on making a major advance into health care when it was bypassed during hospitals’ recent stampede toward electronic health records, triggered over the past few years by Meaningful Use incentives. Some people blame the neglect of open source alternatives on a lack of marketing (few open source projects are set up to woo non-technical adoptors), some on conservative thinking among clinicians and their administrators, and some on the readiness of the software. I decided to put aside the past and look toward the next stage of EHRs. As Meaningful Use ramps down and clinicians have to look for value in EHRs, can the open source options provide what they need?

The oncoming end of Meaningful Use payments (which never came close to covering the costs of proprietary EHRs, but nudged many hospitals and doctors to buy them) may open a new avenue to open source. Deanne Clark of DSS, which markets a VistA-based product called vxVistA, believes open source EHRs are already being discovered by institutions with tight budgets, and that as Meaningful Use reimbursements go away, open source will be even more appealing. My question in this article, though, is whether open source EHRs will meet the sophisticated information needs of emerging medical institutions, such as Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). Shahid Shah has suggested some of the EHR requirements of ACOs. To survive in an environment of shrinking reimbursement and pay-for-value, more hospitals and clinics will have to beef up their uses of patient data, leading to some very non-traditional uses for EHRs.

EHRs will be asked to identify high-risk patients, alert physicians to recommended treatments (the core of evidence-based medicine), support more efficient use of clinical resources, contribute to population health measures, support coordinated care, and generally facilitate new relationships among caretakers and with the patient. A host of tools can be demanded by users as part of the EHR role, but I find that they reduce to two basic requirements...