The recent release of Debian 5.0 (Lenny) contains a lot of medical software which is interesting for several tasks in medical work. The strongest part remains the support of microbiological applications but also medical imaging and the practice management GNUmed are included now.
Perhaps an article on The Register might be interesting as well.
What is new for Debian Med in Lenny?
The conference Review Committee is seeking proposals for presentations based on “real-world” organizational experiences, evaluations, case studies or research papers relevant to the conference themes of SOA and value in Healthcare. Please indicate whether you are recommending your submission for the Executive Summit, the Business Track, or the Technical Track.
What if Mark could be convinced to literally fund open source (CCHIT ceritifcation fees, for example)? – Ed Dodds
Its easy to write about what the government or other people should do with our/their money. It’s harder to come up with a course of action that I can undertake on my own that possibly, somehow could make a difference. My first inclination is always to try to look “for the next big thing”. But the next big thing is just that, next. Its not now. Its Venture Capital. Its not self funding, renewal capital.
RPMS is a VistA derivative used in the ambulatory care setting for the Indian Health Services. According to this announcement, it is now CCHIT certified. “The Indian Health Service (IHS) has been notified that the newest version of the IHS health information system
has earned certification by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT).
Jeff Soble, Neil Cowles, and Edmund Billings have a response reproduced after the break to HIMSS “Call to Action”. This is a sobering look at the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 which looks poised to result in the demise of real competition, medical data in the hands of a cartel or monopoly for a few wealthy corporations, loss of privacy and the loss of the physician as the traditional custodian of medical data. Item 3 is salient: “CCHIT works to the benefit of a small number of large EMR vendors that can command a high price from the relatively small segment of the market able to currently afford their products. It is essentially anti-competitive, and establishes a major barrier to entry by new vendors and open source projects (where the majority of innovation will take place).”
After reading the parts of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that relate to health IT, here are my conclusions: 1) More of the same. The current plans and all the same players for Health IT as before only now there is a lot more money involved and a brief time to accomplish all of this in terms of health care time: 2014. 2) A chicken in every pot approach, everyone gets money: education, Health IT schools, some physicians get money for implementation on a descending rate. Some talk of free/open source but the usual political favorites AHIC, etc. are all still there as well only they get a lot more money now. 3) No clear plan as to how to do all this. No clear plan for dealing with issues such as 20 year veteran clinicians and nurses with no computer experience. No plan for enabling the proliferation of innovative software with existing systems. No penalty or plans for dealing with proprietary software stonewalling.
In order to consolidate project planning, bug reporting, team
organization and translations as well as the freedom to add other models
in addition to openEHR; OSHIP development has been moved to Launchpad.
The mailing list is at
“mailto:oship-dev@lists.launchpad.net
“:mailto:oship-dev@lists.launchpad.net
THIRD ANNUAL DEMONSTRATING OPEN-SOURCE HEALTHCARE SOLUTIONS (DOHCS) CONFERENCE LAUNCHES ANNUAL LINUX GATHERING
Lend Your Voice to this Crucial Discussion as America Transitions to a New Era
Arguably, the unique elements of the 2008/2009 recession combined with a change in administration and governing philosophy constitute a unique historical moment as demonstrated by ongoing events:
OMG™, Health Level Seven® (HL7), and the SOA Consortium™ announce the “SOA in Healthcare: Value in a Time of Change,” conference held June 2-4, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Chicago, IL. Registration details may be found online at http://www.omg.org/hc-std
Gold Sponsor: EDS
Silver Sponsors: Appian, Intel
About page 701 of the stimulus bill is a provision for studying Open Source: “…(A) the current availability of open source
6 health information technology systems to Fed7
eral safety net providers (including small, rural
8 providers);
9 (B) the total cost of ownership of such sys10
tems in comparison to the cost of proprietary
11 commercial products available;
12 (C) the ability of such systems to respond
13 to the needs of, and be applied to, various pop14
ulations (including children and disabled indi15
viduals); and
16 (D) the capacity of such systems to facili17
tate interoperability…’