July 6th, 2007
Medsphere begin again
Two years after throwing over its founders and making a public domain code base proprietary, Medsphere is seeking a new CEO and a new start with the open source movement.
“The community edition licenses are on the Web site – we have a version under Mozilla and then we have a GPL on the OpenVista server, and the appliance is out there,” said senior vice president Frank Pecaitis (above).
It was the release of OpenVista on SourceForge by company co-founders Scott and Steve Shreeve in late 2005 that precipitated a crisis of firings and lawsuits. CEO Ken Kizer’s decision to resign this year, for unrelated reasons, may be the start of some healing.
We can hope so, because VistA, the public domain software of the Veterans Administration on which OpenVista is based, is important stuff. Its Electronic Health Record format could, if it became a standard, begin the creation of a universal health records system.
Medsphere, under Kizer, made the decision to keep its form of the OpenVista hospital management system under a proprietary license, and Pecaitis said that decision will not be revised.
But the subsequent releases of code under OSI-approved licenses shows the company wants to maintain contact with the community which spawned it.
The new CEO, whoever it is, will find a senior management team, a business plan, and some key customer installations, including one at Midland, Texas, on which to build.
Former CEO Larry Augustin remains on the board along with co-founder Scott Steve Shreeve, and Pecaitis hopes for better relations with the open source community.
“Open source isn’t as pervasive in health care, but we have significant experience which will complement that. We will focus on growth, expand our product roadmap, and foster the community. Success will follow,” he concluded.
But if you search Google today under Medsphere CEO the top results are all about the controversy, whose wounds run deep. Can the company heal them? Stay tuned.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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