- From: Charlie Brooks <Charlie@HBCS.Org>
- Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2001 15:15:07 -0500
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
Dear Madam or Sir On behalf of Hospital Billing Collection Service, Ltd. (which is a large consortium of non-profit hospitals, clinics and medical centers in the United States of North America) I would like to register our strong disaproval of the proposed inclusion of patented technologies in W3 Open Standards. Our members use many differing proprietary technologies due to the many unusual requirements of modern medical science. To date, we have found Open Standards (such as the IETF's Internet Protocol and your existing standards) to be a great help in our mission to integrate hospital medical records and systems in a secure, supportable way at minimum cost. Our own focus, as you might assume from the name of our organization, is billing data. However, all medical record-keeping and information distribution is subject to the same realities I've described. Proprietary software vendors have shown no great humanitarian conscience in this regard. Furthermore, I believe the entire non-profit sector benefits tremendously from free and open software, and the RAND proposal would have a severely deletorious effect on many fine institutions such as libraries, museums, and community centers that cannot afford proprietary software implementations. Thank you for your extension of the comment period to allow me to find out about this situation. As you have probably realized, there is a much larger community that will be affected by your decisions than is able to follow your mailing lists. --Charlie Brooks Senior System Engineer Hospital Billing Collection Service, Ltd
Received on Friday, 5 October 2001 15:15:46 UTC