The decision to make software Open Source is not transparent to everyone, and people tend to think, WHY do they let anyone see their code? Anyone could take it away and make business out of it. Anyone could find weaknesses and exploit them.

The current software landscape for medical doctors in Austria is, let's name it, a bit poor.

There is almost only one company left that serves over 70% of the EMR market for general practitioners, besides a few small isolated applications. Their software is useable, but lacks of some very important key characteristics, like being open sourced. Thousands of sensible patient data files are stored within the database of an EMR. Medical software has to store these files securely, and provide secure interfaces for data interchange with other trusted medical systems.

A medical software that is not OSS (Open Source Software) nowadays means that the software can only be trusted to a certain extent. While this seems to sound like paranoia, the NSA scandal in 2013 has proven the opposite.

Additionally despite having a data format for exporting/importing patient data, this is not very well standardized, and lacks of completeness: You are going to loose some patient data if you want to switch your EMR. The current software companies have no real benefit of improving this interoperability - they would loose customers then.

So I want to state a few advantages of OSS and why we prefer it:

<dokuteaser>

You don't know if patient data are kept within your database of a closed source software. While it seems extremely unlikely that the software company illegally fetches data from you, you can neither prove nor deny it. You are fully dependent on the company's information. With OSS, every step of the software is transparent and can be proven. </dokuteaser>

<dokuteaser>

It is evident that OSS has better software quality. This is not generally true, but OSS has more people are looking critically at the code. Writing “bad code” can not be hidden easily.
You try to not make typography errors on your business card, don't you?Coverity Scan: OSS is Eating the World </dokuteaser>

<dokuteaser>

A common misconception is that OSS is less secure because “anyone can read the code and hack into the system, because he sees the vulnerabilities”. This is only partly true. Security vulnerabilities may be found easier in OpenSource software - and exploited, if they are found by the wrong people. But they can also be fixed easier – if they’re found by the right people. </dokuteaser>

<dokuteaser>

Be honest: you don't have much choice. If you want to have a certain feature implemented in your current EMR software, you can kindly ask and wait. If you want to switch the software company because of bad support, there is no real alternative because you loose half of your data when switching. With OSS, you have the choice. While this does not mean that you have to be a programmer, you can ask any programmer to implement a certain feature for you. Or keep the software, and go for another support company. </dokuteaser>