April 17th, 2008
Can Tolven give Medsphere the lift it needs?
Medsphere’s efforts to revolutionize hospital computing with an open source code base (derived from the VA’s VistA system) got a big boost at HIMSS with news it would partner with Tolven Inc.
The reason is only now becoming apparent. Tolven’s founders, most of them former Oracle executives, have the chops to adapt mainstream open source technologies to the field. They’ve already got Sun executives blogging about them.
Medsphere co-founder Scott Shreeve has called this STAT news, believing it could save the whole OpenVista movement.
The strategy is to build out open source EMR, PHR and hospital systems based on OpenVista and open source standbys like PostgreSQL and JBOSS, offered under standard open source licenses like the GPL.
They’ve certainly got the organizational structure down. TolvenHealth is the .com. The Tolven Institute runs the .org and its board is loaded with heavy-hitters who are independent of the .com.
VistA and Open Healthcare News has a feature on the data structures in its January-February issue, written by Tolven co-founder Tom Jones.
They have dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s before launch. The question remains whether Tolven can get together the critical mass needed to make inroads in an increasingly-crowded market.
I hope they have Skip McGaughey’s number.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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