Talk:Interim Final Rule Possible Responses

As I understand it the documents say that you could possibly start your own open source certification process. However, obtaining the funds and personnel to form a certification body in the open source world is far more difficult than with proprietary dominated EHR groups like HIMSS and CCHIT.

Proprietary EHR companies can explicitly lock-in customers when F/OSS ones mostly cannot. This is a competitive disadvantage for F/OSS companies and society since the un-informed, un-sophisticated customer likely does not know or care and is likely to respond to a sales pitch. The 'noise effect' and the Prisoners Dilemma applies here. Proprietary companies long term probably need to serve far fewer customers to make the same or more money as F/OSS companies.

This is a problem. A private transaction between two private parties is one thing, paying for such a transaction with taxpayer money is another.

Since interoperability is like fusion power (always just out of reach, we REALLY mean to do it THIS time!(tm)) these taxpayer funded transactions hold the possibility of keeping practitioners and taxpayers in perpetual servitude using their own money whereas with F/OSS EHR software and companies that is much less likely to be the case.

-- Ignacio Valdes, MD, MS