Senator Rockefeller seeking to create free medical software for electronic medical records management

It has been proposed by Senator John D. Rockefeller for the development of universal medical records management software. The bill , The Health Information Technology Public Utility Act of 2009, implements a grant program for the development of open source software.

An open source code for use of medical records management would allow coders to develop it for easier more cost efficient software in the future as well as offer something free of charge for the 80 percent of practices that do not have this available to them. Standards for medical records management are very un-modern and lack the sophistication of what modern electronic medical records provide. Storage space is limited and often times creates a time barrier for employers to facilitate their patients.

Should this bill succeed and become reality, it isn't too hard to predict that medical records will be much easily transfered from practice to practiced due to it being digitalized. Many small practices have not had the resources available to purchase expensive medical software. This bill offers change to organizations that may never have had it become a reality.

There has been more then enough research into open source software to state that it is a cost efficient way to advance the technology of a selected path. In the past each open source generally had a license of use for programmers to build upon. Some open source claimed any changes to be owned by the creators of the open source while others allowed any change to be made and marketed.

The bill does not make it mandatory for anyone to use the open source software, it is simply a grant that provides a modern program available to be used, however I am curious to see if there is a negative impact in the market of medical software. I am hoping at the least patches created by private programmers will be made and marketed as a way of stimulating the economy.

It would be a great help for hospitals and health care as a whole if the only software someone needed to purchase was a quick fix based upon the practice's individual needs.

The belief is that the new software will compliment the older software by allowing more people access to electronic medical records and the old software developers the ability to use the new source integrated within their current software. The only issue i see is that EMR , electronic medical records, has in one way been a great way of having one practice stand apart from a practice of less clinical value. Because the software would become so universally accepted, there would be less definitive difference between the various practices. This in itself offers as many problems as it solves.

The bill supplies money for the project development for up to 5 years, afterwards if the project has shown signs of success it would be extended for additional time and money. Currently Medicaid is the largest and most widely used medical insurance. The bill oversees the integration of it's standards within the medicaid system.

This is a giant step towards universal health care, and i am expecting this bill to be accepted by President Obama.