ClearCanvas was founded on the belief that healthcare information technology (IT) can be done differently, if our mission and values are different. Although the traditional vendor model has made many positive technological contributions to the industry, we believe that if healthcare IT is to be made as accessible as possible to anyone who believes they may benefit from it, a new model is required. We believe such a model should embody the following values:

Innovation

In Technology. People often feel that they need to choose between high quality, innovative healthcare IT applications and those which are affordable and accessible. We believe this "you get what you pay for" dichotomy is a false one. We want to create free, open source healthcare IT systems that aren't just functional and well-engineered, but innovative and exciting as well.

In Business. For us, it's not quite good enough simply to be technologically innovative. We want to be innovative in how we run our business as well. While revenue and profitability are necessary for sustainability, they cannot be the primary measures of success. Because accessibility is the goal, we believe success should be measured in terms of 1) the number of people in different places who are using what we create, 2) the number of people in the development community who are extending what we have created and 3) whether our creations have reached the point where the global community sustains it and a single organization is no longer required to keep it going.

Empowerment

When you buy a house, your ownership of it entitles you to paint it, put in a new window, add a new room, or perform any kind of renovation you want on it. If you don't know how to do it yourself, you have the option to ask or pay someone else to do it for you. We believe that healthcare IT should also be like that. No two healthcare institutions are exactly the same. And so we believe that you should be empowered to extend software in the way you see fit so that the solution is customized to your needs.

Community

We believe that when "extenders" (i.e., developers) gather around a software product and contribute back to the community through the addition of new features and other product enhancements, the entire community benefits and the overall value of the product is increased. We also believe that being compliant to existing industry standards, such as DICOM, HL7 and IHE, fosters inter-operability between existing products from different vendors.