At work, I often have to use a Windows machine. Despite my opinions regarding FOSS software, Windows is a fact of corporate life. Often, I cannot even dual boot. *sigh* However, when I do have to use Windows, I do not like to go far without my *nix power tools. Here is a list of […]
Health IT (HIT) in Houston
Houston has the largest medical center in the world. I am starting a new networking group in Houston called HIT in Houston I plan to discuss current events, and Health IT trends as they apply to Houston, T.X. Soon I hope to begin holding monthly meetings through meetup.com and I already have a Linked In […]
HealthVault Response: Lucid comments from Fred Fortin
The World Healthcare Blog recently had a post that quoted a portion of a post from my HealthVault series. In the post, titled, What Will Patients Expect in the Completeness of Their Electronic Medical Records? Fred Fortin extends upon my comments about the complexity of patient privacy with some lucid questions about the implications of […]
FOSS Sin: Pointless Duplication of Effort
Duplication of effort is viewed as a sin in the Free and Open Source software (FOSS) development community. The whole ethos of FOSS dictates that developers should work together, sharing the improvements they make to software between them. For this reason forking, or starting a redundant project, is often viewed as an attack against the […]
Why is VistA good? the VistA open source development model
Recently, VA VistA has been getting a tremendous amount of attention. Lets take a look at the recent events that highlight what VistA is and why it is important. Mexico decides to implement VistA in many of its state run hospitals. Medsphere gambles investment dollars on the idea that VistA can be used in private […]
HealthVault: Software Freedom and Personal Health Records
My next article on HealthVault, does not belong here on FredTrotter.com, I am a guest blogger over on free software magazine and when I have an issue that touches on software freedom, I like to post it there (where it will be read more…) Please enjoy HealthVault: Software Freedom and Personal Health Records -FT […]
Buying paint and vendor lock-in
An article I wrote about Vendor Lock-in in health software has been published in the recent Fall 07 edition of EHR Scope. From the article: You can fire your paint store, your dentist, your lawyer, your mechanic and even your doctor. You can fire them for any reason. Yet you cannot fire your proprietary EHR […]
HealthVault: Medically, Legally, and Politically Savvy but Technically Uninformed.
Dr. Deborah Peel has endorsed Microsoft’s HealthVault PHR. From the Patient Privacy Rights press release: PatientPrivacyRights.Org founder, Dr. Deborah C. Peel, will stand with Microsoft in Washington, D.C today at a press conference to announce the launch of HealthVault. Is Dr Peel qualified to make this recommendation? Please take a look at Dr. Deborah Peel’s […]
HealthVault: What to do if Microsoft does nothing
Somehow I doubt that Microsoft will respond to my criticisms. This is what the Free and Open Source community needs to attempt if Microsoft refused to budge. We need to write a tool, using the Microsoft HealthVault API to export the data from HealthVault. Preferably this should export to a standard format, but comma delimited […]
HealthVault: How to fix it
Microsoft often does the wrong thing. But that does not mean they have to. There are three requirements for behaving ethically as a PHR host. You must release all of the sourcecode to your PHR under a license that qualifies as both “Free (as-in-Freedom-not-price) Software” and Open Source. You must allow for the export of […]