Open Source has a wealth of offerings across many different arenas of software, to date a great deal of the offerings out there are development tools, general purpose applications, and first generation vertical applications. In the medical market there has been a long history of development on first generation software such as OpenEMR, FreeMed, FreeB and others. For some users these applications have offered a productive and capable platform on which to run their practice, but it is apparent to most the first time they go to use them that there is not the level of richness and depth found in proprietary alternatives like WebMD's Intergy, NextGen, or The Medical Manager. With the the release of
ClearHealth 1.0 RC1 there is now a credible and full featured Open Source (under the GPL) offering that competes point for point in the big five areas of medical software: