Open Source and Electronic Medical Records Systems

With the mandate deadline looming for EMR (Electronic Medical Records) for practitioners by 2014 many new EMR software vendors are emerging as well as corporate giants jumping into the market such as Dell, GE, and so on. What is interesting to notice that Open Source technology is playing an increasingly more important role in EMR software systems. Many Open Source technologies have a proven track record in Enterprise Computing and are making their way into clinical data systems. Linux operating system (Red Hat, Suse, Ubuntu, Debian) have grown from being a “hobbyist” and experimental tools into corporate standards. The same holds true for trusted and proven Apache Web Servers, MySQL and Postgres database management systems.