The Open Healthcare Group
A smarter way for better healthcare
Since the late 1990s the Open Healthcare Group has published open standards and open-source software for health records. We now also publish policy proposals on how American healthcare is paid for. The group is the work of Jonathan A. Borden, MD, a practicing neurosurgeon.
New · Policy proposal · November 2026
A fair and coherent way to reduce drug prices
Medicare bluntly negotiates the drug prices for Part D and gives private plans a competitive domestic supply
Physicians and hospitals are already paid within structured systems built on Medicare's relative values and negotiated contracts. Prescription drugs should be too. The proposal offers manufacturers a large national market at a defensible international price. If a manufacturer refuses, qualified domestic producers could be authorized to supply the medicine, with compensation for patent use. It asks Congress to specify the program and have the savings independently scored.
Read the proposal Download (.docx)Policy
Paying for care
Proposals for a payment system that rewards innovation within a defensible framework, written from inside the system by a practicing surgeon.
All policy writingProjects
Software and formats
JSON is now the interoperable data format, and the one AI systems speak. Our current work builds on it.
- Chart, an AI assistant for clinical documentation and coding
- UTHE, a transformation engine for JSON, XML, HTML and HL7
- JSON Schemas for Healthcare
- Loxation, Bluetooth mesh communications for crowds
Standards archive
Specifications, 1998 to 2003
XML-era specifications and reference implementations, kept as published. Parts of this work were incorporated into FHIR and the XML representation of DICOM.
- RDDL, Resource Directory Description Language (rddl.org)
- XMTP, XML MIME Transformation Protocol
- ASTM XML healthcare DTDs
- XChart, the original open-source health record