This award will be presented at the November 8th-12th 2003 American Medical Informatics Association Fall conference at the Marriott Wardham park in Washington, D.C. Exact date and time to be announced. The full text of each nomination is within.

CARE 2x

CARE2x is a smart software for hospitals and health care organizations.
It is designed to integrate the different information systems existing
in these organizations into one single efficient system.

CARE 2002 solves the problems inherent in a network of multiple programs that are noncompatible with each other. It can integrate
almost any type of services, systems, departments, clinic, processes, data, communication, etc. that exist in a hospital. Its design can even handle non-medical services or functions like security, maintenance, etc. It is modular and highly scalable.

CARE 2002 uses a standard SQL database format for storing and retrieving data. The use of a single data format solves the problem of data redundancy. When configured accordingly, it can support multiple database configuration to enhance data security and integrity.

It is a web based software and all its functions can be accessed with a common web browser thus there is no need for a special user interface software. All program modules are processed on the server side. Module updates and
extensions do not require changes on the browsers thus there are no network interruptions and downtimes. Its design supports multiple server configuration to distribute traffic and improve speed and efficiency.

CARE 2x is authored by Elpidio Latorilla. As an open source development (OSD) project, it is written and distributed under the GNU General Public License which means that its source code is freely-distributed and available to the general public.

Thomas Beale

I hereby nominate Thomas Beale of the openEHR Foundation to receive the 2003 LMN Achievement Award.

Over a period of many years Thomas has been steadfast in his pursuit of the “future-proof” medical record application. Thomas’ keen ability to always listen and gather information from others, yet stay focused and not stray from his mission has produced a set of Reference Models and a set of Archetype Models.

While this work in itself is significant, Thomas has also been very busy working with other standards bodies to find the common ground and forge a complete and implementable standard for healthcare inforamtion storage, communications and management.

His world travels and collaborations, quiet leadership and proof through publication puts Thomas Beale in the front of the queue in qualifying for this honor.

David Kibbe, MD

David Kibbe was the prime mover and shaker in 2003 on the Free and Open Source Software scene. He led the American Academy of Family Physicians open-source initiative. It was the first attempt that I know of at a standardized open-source electronic health record by a major American medical association.

Dr. Kibbe showed unusual courage and vision in leading the 50,000 strong AAFP membership towards a unified open-source medical record. Although eclipsed by the e-health initiative, Dr. Kibbe’s initiative may have influenced other major organizations into action.

Dr. Stanley M. Saiki, Jr.

I would like to nominate Dr. Stanley M. Saiki, Jr. for the 2003 Linux Medical News achievement award. Dr. Saiki is the Director of the Pacific Telehealth and Technology Hui, a joint venture of the US Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. [Hui is a Hawaiian word for “partnership”.]

VistA is an enterprise scale healthcare information system, with a patient centric real time electronic health record at the core surrounded by tens of applications. Developed by the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), it is the IT basis of the VA’s high standard of healthcare for which it has been repeatedly and publicly recognized. Thanks to VistA, the majority of the VA’s clinical care is paperless, providing any physician treating a patient with up to date online access to all of the records of that patient. Versions of VistA are in use by the US Department of Defense, and the US Indian Health Service, as well as by healthcare institutions around the world. VistA has been proven to scale in a variety of healthcare settings, from a small clinic to a large teaching hospital.

Although VistA has been in the public domain for many years, available through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the best way to characterize getting up and running with FOIA VistA has been that it is “expert friendly”. Furthermore, FOIA VistA required an underlying software platform that was not open source free software.

In June, 2003, the Pacific Hui released OpenVista. This was a port of VistA to the open source free software (OSFS) platform stack of GT.M[tm] on GNU/Linux on industry standard computer hardware. In addition to the port, the Hui also released documentation to permit virtually anyone with a core set of Linux skills to get VistA up and running on a computer system. Since then, in the open source healthcare community, there has been a tremendous flurry of activity, and many have successfully bootstrapped themselves with OpenVista on GT.M on Linux. I believe that in 2004 we will see the first production use of this software stack.

As the Director of the Hui, Dr. Saiki was instrumental in making OpenVista a reality. As a result of his leadership, the OSFS stack of VistA on GT.M on GNU/Linux is a proven software that is easily accessible to all comers.