HIT Vendors should create virtual appliances for their software

A virtual machine with pre-installed healthcare IT software/systems is something I’ve been looking forward to for a while. Closed source as well as open-source software based on technology from VMWare, Inc. would allow saving hours or even days of effort often required in installing healthcare IT software.

Healthcare IT vendors should use VMware’s new virtual appliance software to create free downloadable zip files that contains a virtual machine (VM) with pre-installed software like MedSphere, VISTA, and similar software. It would take advantage of the technology provided by VMWare, Inc. that allows an operating system to run as a standard application on any computer. To run the virtual machine all an end user would need to get is the free VMWare Player from the VMWare website.

There are already dozens of freely available virtual appliances on the VMWare website and I use many of them now. It’s great to be able to try out or deploy a complex operating envrionment in minutes instead of hours and days. If you want to be able to allow people to try out your software or system you owe them a virtual appliance.