A push by the Veterans Affairs Department to incorporate open source software into its electronic health record system isn't an attempt to avoid paying license fees to proprietary vendors, said Peter Levin, VA chief technology officer. Levin spoke Oct. 16 during a Washington, D.C. symposium sponsored by Linux distributor Red Hat.

The VA began in August an effort to create an open source successor to VA and Defense Department EHRs.

"What I'm not trying to convince you is that...we're even hostile to the proprietary incumbent," Levin said. "We know that we're going to have to pay for it," he said, appearing to refer to software.

The idea, Levin said, is to get away from a waterfall development model in which "we were captive to deciding once" the software to be utilized.

Incorporating proprietary software into EHR systems is not "anathema" to the VA, Levin added. What the department truly wants, he added, is open interfaces "so we can plug in, plug out."

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