Open Source Software Low Cost Alternatives for Healthcare

Abstract

Healthcare is the worlds second largest and also the fastest growing service sector. A well-managed and low cost healthcare system is of great importance to a country where large population with diverse social, educational and economical background is to be served. With health care being a government sector service, most of the hospitals are providing services with limited resources thus lacking the best services at time. ICT can play an important role in improving the services by managing the resources optimally and efficiently as ICT based tools can be used for resource management, patient record keeping, sharing the information, faster processing of data, managing the people at hospital etc. The development of an exhaustive healthcare system involves complex issues like finance, performance, security, scalability, and adherence to standards. Further, open source software solutions can help the hospitals to achieve the required services at lower cost. The paper presents the justifications to use open source solutions for hospitals and at the end will discus a case study about customization of the existing open source Hospital information system CARE2X, to fit into the workflow requirements of an Indian hospital with the advice of doctors. Customized CARE2X is implemented in Pathology department of client hospital.