HIStalk Quotes
Medsphere CEO Kizer Announces Departure
Ken Kizer, chairman and CEO of Medsphere, will leave the company, Modern Healthcare reports. He cited personal reasons for his departure, which will not become effective until the company names a successor.
Industry newcomer Medsphere markets the OpenVista system, a commercialized version of the VA's VistA hospital application system. Kizer joined the company as CEO in November 2005, replacing Larry Augustin.
Co-founders Scott and Steve Shreeve were dismissed from the company in August 2006 and sued for $50 million. Medsphere claimed the brothers released proprietary technology to open source repository SourceForge without authorization.
Notwithstanding the marvelous advances being made at the high end of
medical devices, (or low end if you prefer to classify nano-devices and
molecular medicine there) the state of healthcare I.T. is pretty
embarrassing. To describe it as "stuck-in-the-past" is simply inadequate;
it's actually, for the most part, still catching up with the past. Add
political bickering over open-sourcing code that, itself, is built on a
technology base which is older than the entire life of a U.S. patent, not
to mention already freely available in the public domain through the
auspices of the FOIA, and one can only wonder where we're headed. Mr. Kizer
should be admired for his work at the V.A.; he should be ashamed of himself
for the mess he's made at Medshpere.
You know the wheel is also technology that is stuck in the past - but it's
not like I'm going to throw out my bike and sit around waiting for someone
to invent a hoverboard. "You go to war with the army you have".
As a John Doe defendant in said $50 million USD lawsuit, I can tell you it
certainly is a trainwreck. Medsphere is completely in the wrong here and it
just keeps getting worse for them. I would not be surprised if Larry
Augstine invokes the DMCA to get my IP address from this post like he did
to get all the IP addresses of the people who downloaded the open-sourced
OpenVista from sourceforge. And yes, this is the same Larry Augustine who
was interviewed on video about how the DMCA should be abolished and is
morally wrong.
