Health Care Industry Adoption of Open Source and...

The Veteran's Administration’s (VA) recent decision to go open source, which I blogged about earlier this week, is the latest in a growing number of health care organizations turning to open source for next gen solutions. While the VA is not pursuing a particular technology at this time, we hope that Drupal can play a part in their approach.

Kirsten Burgard of the VA has graciously agreed to participate on a Drupal panel with me at Gov 2.0 Expo to be held in Washington, DC on Wednesday, May 26.

Drupal’s growing credentials in health care bolster the case for the VA to consider Drupal. Health Net recently became an Acquia customer. As one of the country's largest publicly traded managed health care companies, Health Net’s future use of Drupal is further evidence of the growth of Drupal not only in health care, but also in enterprises in general.

Florida Hospital has significant experience with Drupal, and was one of Acquia’s earliest customers. Rick Mann and David Oakley had a great presentation of the hospital’s use of Drupal at Drupalcon San Francisco. It’s a great study for anyone struggling with rationalizing dozens or hundreds of web properties across and enterprise.

There are lots of other examples of Drupal being used in health care, including medical devices player Epocrates and one of the earlier sites, the physician community Ozmosis.

It’s an exciting road ahead for Drupal in health care!

P.S. The other participants on the panel are NY State Senate CIO, Andrew Hoppin and the former web manager for the White House, Rob Klause, now the open source practice director for Acquia partner Siteworx. Impressive lineup!