Recently, we received the following letter from an informatics researcher outlining her feelings about commercial vs. private/open-source vendors of clinical technology. I thought you'd find it interesting, so here's a long excerpt:

"[Recently,] I attended the annual convention of the American College of Physicians. I visited about 10 booths of IT vendors. Every single system [mostly EMRs] I saw and talked about with their personnel were missing something, either in data standards enabling shareability/integration, data privacy, functionality, appropriateness for patient use, maintenance contracts, or other areas that a CIO and users would be concerned about [some had some good points]. Some of them were still 'promising' the functionality, standards and integration I was looking for [also a characteristic of IT vendors in other industries; in my day we called it 'vaporware' or, when I asked [especially those where the primary salesperson/developer was a physician].

"If I were a potential customer, I would not buy any of them [and I certainly would not advocate that patients buy into the Google, Amazon, or any other commercial EMRs being sold by those 'technology giants' who don't have a clue about medical data and medical records. I would probably obtain the [open source code], hire really good people, and create my system in-house, for a lot less money [and] agita, [leading to] more fulfilled promises and happier end-users." - Anne Carroll

So, readers, what do you think of her critique? Are the ambulatory systems you see failing in so many areas, as Ms. Carroll seemed to see? If so, is open-source technology the solution? Please drop me a note and tell me what you think...this is such an important issue! - Anne