What's the direction of ehealthopensource.org after September
The KTP is due to finish at the end of September therefore we are looking to understand how the eHealthOpenSource.org can become self-sustaining, for example ownership of assets (eg ehealthopensource.org website and codeforge), maintenance and governance etc. We are looking to set up a webinar on the 31st May for steering group members and the wider community to share ideas on the following themes:
Ownership
Governance body
Maintenance
Considering Open Source from the NHS's Perspective
Synopsis: When considering open source for healthcare one of the key challenges is to understand how products map to business functionality. By creating a map or matrix this could assist the NHS in understanding and engaging with open source offerings. This workshop will brainstorm different approaches to creating this type of map or matrix and ask participants to give their input as to how they might use it and what they would be looking for.
This is an interactive workshop and will have presentation elements followed by brainstorming sessions. So there is an expectation that attendees will contribute during the brainstorming parts of the webinar using the variety of tools provided.
Whenever brainstorming takes place during the webinar, in addition to speaking rights, there will be access to a whiteboard which enables drawing and text to be placed by all attendees. There is also the ability to share documents or your desktop with everyone if required. Guidance will be provided prior to and during the webinar.
VistA and the US Veterans Administration: Facilitating the radical transformation of health systems through evidence-based software evolution
The collaborative, continuous improvement processes found in open source ecosystems mimic in many ways those found in the practice of evidence-based medicine. This is one of the fundamental characteristics of open source that make it very effective and powerful tool for facilitating radical transformation and improvement in healthcare. One could characterize the adoption of opensource software and development processes in healthcare as “evidence based software evolution.”
There is no better example of the transformative power of opensource than the role that VistA, the opensource EHR and HIS, has played in facilitating the transformation of the US Veterans Administration health system. The US VA transformed itself from one of the worst in North America to one of most highly praised systems in the world. This webinar will examine how the synergies between opensource software and processes and evidence-based medicine were exploited to radically improve health safety and outcomes, and at the same time significantly reduce or contain costs. Examples of improvements that VistA facilitated will be presented and key aspects of VistA's functionality will be demonstrated.
Joseph Dal Molin, President of E-cology Corp. and Director and co-founder of WorldVistA has over twelve years experience developing and applying opensource strategy in the healthcare sector. His extensive international experience, includes his role as advisor to Jordan's national, opensource, eHealth programme which is based on WorldVistA EHR.
The following documents are available:
View presentation slides (include the FTP link to the "official" VistA sources)
How to Build An Open Source Software Community
The heart and soul of any open source project is the people. Although people participate in open source projects in many different ways, the underlying motivation for their participation is the same. People participate because of their commitment and passion, whether it is a passion for coding, finding bugs, designing UI, or writing translations for documentation. It is this passion that brings people together and forms a community around the open source project.
Yet, growing a community isn’t as simple as “If you build it, they will come” (to steal a line from the movie Field of Dreams). It requires serious dedication from members of the core project team to foster the growth of a successful open source community. It requires commitment and active participation from the project owners to engage the community, until such time as the community becomes self-sustaining.
Fortunately, there has been lots of research conducted into what it takes to make an open source community successful. Discover tips and tricks from project owners regarding what it takes to go from your first open source release to creating a self-sustaining community around your project.
This talk will cover tips and tricks on the following:
- Tips for releasing your first open source project
- Tips for running your project once it’s released to the community
- Tips for sustaining a happy open source community
- Tips for testing open source software
Lastly, in this talk, you’ll explore new tools, like Ohloh.net, for helping you connect with other likeminded, passionate developers. Ohloh is the largest directory of open source projects, allowing users to evaluate which open source project best fits their individual needs. We’re currently in the process of revitalizing Ohloh, so you’ll get an inside look at the progress we’ve made and where Ohloh is headed.
If you want to register a place for this webinar, please visit the registration page and get your joining details now!
The Common User Interface Reference Implementation Open Source'
The CURIO Project Board has organised a workshop on January 12th 2011 to present on the outputs from this project followed by discussions and input into future developments.
CURIO: ‘The Common User Interface Reference Implementation Open Source’ project is a joint project between UK Terminology Centre, NHS Connecting for Health and UCL CHIME. It has developed open source components which are freely available, portable and platform independent and meet particular common user interface (CUI) guidelines and use cases.
The CUI use cases utilised in the project are: SNOMED CT single concept matching, Drug Chart and Medications List. We would like to take this opportunity to appraise those with an interest in this area of the technology challenges faced and decisions made, the framework developed and the prototype applications available.
An outline programme is available in the 'Common User Interface Reference Implementation Open source Project (CURIO)'
Presentation slides can be viewed here.
Summary feedback on discussion session can be viewed.
Further details on the technology framework are available in the 'CURIO Technology Appraisal Document'
Tim Chearman from DS&P, Department of Health Informatics Directorate introduced the overall project and Sevket Arikan from UCL CHIMEpresented and demonstrated the software components
Learn More
CURIO was developed as a collaborative research project by the Centre for Health Informatics and Multi professional Education (CHIME) team from UCL and the Common User Interface (CUI) team from NHS Data Standards and Products.
