Hospital software vendor McKesson uses Linux to heal IT budgets

Combination of Windows and Linux...back end with Linux while clients are using a Windows interface..as the article states, moving from Windows on the front end is not quite ready for prime time due to massive training, etc. that would be required...BD

December 11, 2007 (Computerworld) -- In 2004, health care software vendor McKesson Provider Technologies began focusing on ways to cut IT costs for customers, including hospitals and medical offices. McKesson, which serves about 2,500 hospitals, mostly in the U.S., will continue to move its remaining applications to Linux, he said.
The cure for IT cost bloat: moving many of McKesson's medical software applications to Linux, which could then be used on less expensive commodity hardware instead of expensive mainframes.
Today, San Francisco-based McKesson offers about 50 of its 70 most popular health care applications -- dealing with everything from billing to pharmacy records, staffing, admissions, physician order entry systems and surgery scheduling -- on Linux, reducing costs for hospitals and medical offices. The move was solidified in February, when McKesson partnered with Linux vendor Red Hat Inc. to unveil the Red Hat Enterprise Healthcare Platform, which was customized to meet the needs of the health care industry.
With the Red Hat/McKesson systems, hospitals and medical offices run their back-office infrastructure on Red Hat Linux, while their front-end clients use Microsoft Windows -- at least for now, Simpson said. "Our hospitals aren't ready yet for Linux on the desktop, but it's coming" in another three or four years, he said. "If you look at the total costs of hospitals and the pressure on hospitals to continue to lower their costs, it's coming."