What’s the role of open source in healthcare reform?

The debate around healthcare reform and "meaningful use" has managed to stir some passions, but there's been almost no mention of open source being used as an approach for health informatics (EHRs, EMRs, PHRs, and HIE).

Not only is open source being left out of the conversation, but HITSP is proposing national HIT standards that will include proprietary code bases such as HL7, CCR and SNOMED-CT. These proprietary standards will effectively be monopolies where the health IT infrastructure will be built on private intellectual property. The AMA's listing of procedure codes is an example of such a monopoly, with a cumbersome application process and costly licensing that starts in the thousands of dollars.

In order to make a case for open source in healthcare, there need to be compelling economic arguments. There's also a fundamental lack of understanding of open source across all of healthcare, such that there's a huge immediate need to explain it.

Q: In your opinion, what is the role that open source development, free and open standards, and organized developer communities can play in healthcare reform?

This page works like open source: Our intent is to start a dialog that will eventually feed a white paper on this subject. If you have facts and citations that you can point to, your comment is more likely to be included. If you're especially proud of your comment, please feel free to link to it from Twitter.

If you think open source is useless, let us know, too.