"But it's absurd to say that pursuing open-source models would improve this. Whether the software is open or proprietary, the real barrier to what the author wr

"But it's absurd to say that pursuing open-source models would improve this. Whether the software is open or proprietary, the real barrier to what the author writes about is that hospital IT departments aren't up to the job." That's also where I differ with the author; I have yet to see any evidence that open-source software could ever be up to the task. In this case, relying on the kindness of strangers simply won't get the job done, since unless developers are doing this work for a living, odds are they won't be interested. So as a hospital modernizing its IT system, you'd need to get a good development team to do it, and whether or not the end product is open source is irrelevant.