Open Source NHIN RFP Set-Aside

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Open Source NHIN RFP Set-Aside

Posted by Mark Spohr on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @ 12:01 PM
from the Medical FOSS Development dept.
The Health and Human Services Department plans an open-source set-aside for one of the six contracts it wants to award for prototypes of a Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN). Details here. Update: Note that Dr. Pico's statements are misleading. The actual amendment PDF text can be found here. Digg this article

The Health and Human Services Department plans an open-source set-aside for one of the six contracts it wants to award for prototypes of a Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN).

HHS, in a July 1 amendment to its request for proposals for the NHIN, said it will set aside one unrestricted award for open-source software which meets the following criteria: free redistribution, inclusion of source code, permission for modifications and non-specific licensing.

Dr. Richard Pico, chief medical and technology officer in Perot Systems' health care division, said HHS is looking for a vendor or consortium to develop open-source software for the national health data highway, designed to interchange information between systems from different electronic health record (EHR) systems.

Pico added that the open-source amendment deals with software for managing the exchange of information between EHR systems, not with EHR software itself, such as Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VISTA) software.

"HHS is looking for a Red Hat for the NHIN," Pico said. Red Hat sells and maintains and open-source version of the Linux open-source operating system software. Pico said HHS is looking for a vendor to do the same for the underlying code for the NHIN.

The NHIN request for proposals asks vendors to design and develop a prototype network that could operate in three health care markets.

The proposal states that the prototype must be suited to real world health care environments, such as doctors' offices, hospitals, clinics and labs. Vendors must demonstrate how their prototypes would exchange electronic health record (EHR) information among health care providers in different settings.

If HHS does not receive an open source bid, the department will dissolve the set aside and reserves the right to award six non-open-source contracts, according to the amendment.

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Re: Open Source NHIN RFP Set-Aside
by Ignacio Valdes, MD, MS on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @ 02:50 PM

Unfortunately this was announced July 1st, letters of intent due July 7th, with proposal July 14th. I do not see how this can be done in two weeks when it is difficult enough to do in 4-5 weeks. -- IV

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Re: Open Source NHIN RFP Set-Aside
by Ignacio Valdes, MD, MS on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @ 08:04 PM

This statement: 'Pico added that the open-source amendment deals with software for managing the exchange of information between EHR systems, not with EHR software itself, such as Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VISTA) software.' Is totally false. The amendment says nothing about these things. -- IV

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Re: Open Source NHIN RFP Set-Aside
by Will Ross on Thursday July 07, 2005 @ 12:08 PM

The first open source amendment, released July 1st, does not need to specify the "implementation" because it is already specified in the full RFP. Neither does the second open source amendment, released July 6th. The RFP distinguishes between "implementation" and "architecture" (Section H.1). "It is the Government's intention to allow the Contractor to obtain copyright(s) ... to the implementation of the prototype. It is the Government's intention to permit the Contractor to commercialize their implementations." (Section H.1) The implementation is the exchange of data, not the local EHR. Separate from the implementation, the "architecture" of the implementation is to be placed in the public domain. "...the Government intends that all data rights relating to the architecture of the prototype will be committed to the public domain." (Section H.1) The part I wonder about is the relationship between "public domain" and a FSF or OSF compliant license. Does this imply a fork in the project in order to strand some "architecture" in the public domain ? IANAL, so my brain doesn't intuitively "get" what is likely to happen here. [wr]

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Re: Open Source NHIN RFP Set-Aside
by Rick Stockton on Friday July 08, 2005 @ 11:01 PM

"...free redistribution; inclusion of source code; permission for modifications and derived works; non-restrictive and non-specific licensing and license distribution...."

The GPL imposes significant restrictions on the combination of (a) making modifications *AND* (b) distributing those modifications. IANAL, but it seems to me that software built from GPL components cannot meet these criteria.

Have I got it wrong, or is HHS disallowing any GPL Software? Maybe there isn't any GPL software which RFP respondents would want to use in building their offerings? Or, is this another RFP blunder?

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Re: Open Source NHIN RFP Set-Aside
by Ignacio Valdes, MD, MS on Saturday July 09, 2005 @ 09:03 AM

The GPL allows dual-licensing among other ways of making this be okay. -- IV

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Re: Open Source NHIN RFP Set-Aside
by Will Ross on Monday July 11, 2005 @ 12:17 PM

OpenHRE is a respondent to the RFP. OpenHRE is licensed under the GPL. Our goal is to build an open source reference implementation for health records exchange. -- [wr]

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Re: Open Source NHIN RFP Set-Aside
by Fred Trotter on Monday July 11, 2005 @ 02:07 PM

Will,
I am very glad that someone from the community was already in the pipeline when this went open source!

-FT

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