The health care sector is set for a technology-driven transformation as the federal government pushes adoption of electronic health records and pursues national health information exchange. Hardly surprising, the Open Source Convention (OSCON) has a health care track. But will health care IT consultants embrace open source? Here's an overview.

Free software is about freedom from control. This article discusses how the free software ideals should be applied to hosted personal health record software and how Microsoft's newest PHR, HealthVault, is a threat to free software.

Linux-based and open-source healthcare software has been around for years. Unless you were in health IT, however, chances are you never even heard of it. It's time to pay attention, because it may soon be tracking your medical records.

Today's Report of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission, "A Healthier Future For All Australians: Final Report," makes the e-health system a central plank in the future of health management in Australia.

Or at least it will be if Open Health Tools, a new project to create standards and interoperable systems for accessing electronic health records, is a success.

"To provide quality healthcare services, healthcare providers need to share information whenever they require. In a closed environment, the interfacing issue between disparate systems has been an obstacle for communication and information sharing," said Joseph D. Dal Molin, secretary of the Open Source Health Care Alliance.

A type of application software that functions as a personal organizer is called personal information manager (PIM).

But with all of this focus on streamlining and digitally electrifying health records, I began to wonder where did the Open Source community stand and where is its input? There is certainly a lot of money sitting out there for someone who wants to try to build the better mouse trap.

In developed countries, healthcare workers represent a significant proportion of the working population. For example, in the United Kingdom, more than 1 million people work for the National Health Service, a publicly funded healthcare system. Medical software therefore has a huge market to tap.