Nominations are officially open for the 3rd annual Linux Medical News Software Achievement Award to be presented at the November 8th-12th AMIA Fall conference in Washington, D.C. Open source software isn’t ‘magic pixie dust’ and there are real people making significant personal sacrifices as well as doing difficult work to make medicine’s free software future a reality. This award is intended to honor the individul who has accomplished the most towards the goal of improving medical education and practice through free/open source medical software. Past recipients have been Tim Cook of Open Paradigms and K.S. Bhaskar of Sanchez Computer Associates.

Individuals can be nominated by themselves or others by sending a 1-2 page essay to ivaldes@hal-pc.org on why the individual nominated should receive the award. The award will be given by a panel of judges to the most deserving nominee. Suitable nominees are not limited to software engineers, but can also be project leaders, academics, journalists, documentation writers and any others who have made significant contributions to open source medical software.

The award will be given at the November American Medical Informatics Association 2003 Fall meeting in the Marriot Wardham Park in Washington, D.C. at a date and time to be announced. Attendance is not required to win the award. Deadline for nominations is September 15th, 2003.

Employees of Linux Medical News and their relatives except for my wife Cory are not eligible for the award. Posters to Linux Medical News who are not employed by Linux Medical News are eligible for the award.