This is simply the -best- publicity stunt that any FOSS EHR vendor has done yet.
Last year Cerner decided not to return to the HIMSS show-room floor. Instead they decided to subversively bring in thier massive traveling booth. This is a converted semi truck that obviously cost a small fortune. It is obvious that the pricetag on this thing has got to be into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Anyone who has been to the showroom floor at HIMSS can quickly recognize that this is merely another chapter in the book of excess that is the proprietary EHR vendor community. This kind of spending speaks to one thing: massive profit margins sustained by vendor lock-in.
Medsphere heard about this, and decided to pull a little stunt. They found an old VW bus and turned into a symbol of their company and to a great extent our community as a whole! They spent a modest sum refurbishing their bus, which was already a symbol of everyman freedom! Then they drove it to HIMSS and tried to find a place that they could show thier bus next to the Cerner bus.
The pictures that result are a fitting visual analogy between the basic mindset and philosophy of the FOSS commercial EHR community and the proprietary EHR vendors.
Enough preface… have a look!!
Awesome. Perfect analogy. Mind if I post the picture on my blog? Is the picture open source too?
sure no problem..
Ha, that is pretty awesome. 😛