Abstract
Due to the many advantages of open source software (OSS), including reduced cost of licensing, more flexibility in terms of customisation and redistribution, better quality and no vendor lock-in, OSS in healthcare is increasingly gaining importance. Various open source health information technologies (OS-HITs) are continuously being designed and developed for different areas of healthcare to increase organisational efficiencies and quality of care at minimum costs. The objective of this scoping review is to identify the kinds of existing OS-HITs, their characteristics (e.g. functions) and capabilities (e.g. advantages/disadvantages) for various healthcare stakeholders (physicians and patients) and healthcare sectors (e.g. clinical, administrative). We will conduct a scoping review to identify the range of available OS-HITs in international literature from 1980 to September 2018. Searches will be conducted in six major international databases, namely: Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature Plus, Excerpta Medica Database, Global Health, Library Information Science and Technology Abstracts, Medline and Web of Science to identify relevant published research. We will also search the Google search engine and Google Scholar for on-going and unpublished work and the grey literature. Searches will be peer-reviewed by two independent reviewers and will not be limited by methodology or language. Next, selected references will be tabulated for study characteristics by author affiliation, country of origin, the name of OS-HIT, healthcare area/sector, system requirements, stakeholders, complete solution and web link. Furthermore, functions, benefits/advantages, disadvantages and outcomes (e.g. usability) of OS-HITs will be extracted. Narrative and interpretative synthesis of data will be undertaken. We will report our findings in a peer-reviewed journal.
Highlights
Due to the many advantages of open source software (OSS), including reduced cost of licensing, more flexibility in terms of customisation and redistribution, better quality and no vendor lock-in, OSS in healthcare is increasingly gaining importance
Source code of open source software (OSS) is publicly available for end-users who can examine, add, modify or distribute it, whereas source code of proprietary or ‘closed source’ software is only available to the person or vendor who developed it,[1] and users are solely dependent on the vendor for any modification
This study focused on the availability of the OS EHRs for community clinics and safety-net providers; the comparison of total cost of OS EHR and the proprietary system; the ability of OS EHR to meet the needs of diverse populations; its interoperability with other disparate systems and its conformity to the Meaningful Use requirements as per HITECH legislation
Summary
Due to the many advantages of open source software (OSS), including reduced cost of licensing, more flexibility in terms of customisation and redistribution, better quality and no vendor lock-in, OSS in healthcare is increasingly gaining importance. Various open source health information technologies (OS-HITs) are continuously being designed and developed for different areas of healthcare to increase organisational efficiencies and quality of care at minimum costs. The objective of this scoping review is to identify the kinds of existing OS-HITs, their characteristics (e.g. functions) and capabilities (e.g. advantages/disadvantages) for various healthcare stakeholders (physicians and patients) and healthcare sectors (e.g. clinical, administrative). Due to the many benefits of OSS, such as low cost of licensing, flexibility (can be customised and redistributable), reliability (abundant support from peer developers), enhanced quality (patchwork for bugs) and no vendor lock-in, OSS in healthcare is increasingly being adopted worldwide.[2,3,4]. National Health Service (NHS) England recently supported an initiative called Code4Health, which is an OS platform, a community and a learning tool, which aims to deliver safe and improved patient outcomes by enabling the use of OS digital technology and tools.[10,11,12] By using Code4Health, NHS England intends to create workable OS solutions, ensure to reuse and share all code created in the NHS through a library of assets, provide evidence of value of OSS to the health and social care community, achieve a self-sufficient eco-system of communities and provide equal opportunity for infrastructure services and OS commodities.[11]
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