According to this post on Daniel Drezner’s blog, in which he references an article by Gina Kolata in the New York Times, Medicare is prepared to give doctors, free of charge, the software to computerize their medical practices.  The savings for each doctors office could be as much as $100,000.

Of equal interest to me is that the system they are going to give the doctors is called Vista, which is not owned by any company (i.e. it is open source) and is already being used by Veterans Affairs hospitals and inpatient/outpatient facilities. 

As with other open source software the real power lies in the ability for any number of developers to create improvements or new applications for the system.  Then individual users can pick which components are worth using or implementing.

One example cited is the suggestion of a VA nurse to use barcodes on prescription medications and on patients’ wrist bands.  The person administering the medicine scan’s the drug and the wrist band and if there’s a mismatch between the wrist band and the drug the system catches it.  Programmers added this feature and it led to an 80% drop in drug errors at the VA.

Medicare has rightly identified the backwardness of doctors’ offices as an impediment to an improved healthcare system.  Let’s hope for all our sakes that this new system leads to improved, and cheaper, care.

**Last note** – Vista has always been available for free via a Freedom of Information Act request, but nobody knew it.