The Adoption of Open Source Software in Hospitals

The Open Source Software (OSS) phenomenon has become an important area of interest in information systems research due in part to the large and fast-growing number of OSS users and software products in a large variety of domains. OSS is already being adopted and used as software platform in a number of fields other than health care and it has the potential to be qually promising for the hospital industry. Studying OSS adoption in any domain can help reveal patterns and phenomena that are applicable to adoption in general, in addition to revealing insights into the domain being studied. In particular, the adoption and use of OSS in a hospital context remains a poorly understood phenomenon; only a handful of researchers have addressed the factors inhibiting or facilitating such adoption. Such an understanding is important in helping hospitals make better decisions about whether, and how, adoption of OSS could benefit them.