Hi All, [This posting is related to Tony Shannon's great email regarding the future of openEHR in 2009. I think some of it relates to the technical list members as well so I have CC'd them.]
Not wanting to hi-jack Tony's thread I started this one where I hope I have a few positive and possibly helpful suggestions. Some of them may need funding to help protect some people's time and others are virtually cost free. I do have one negative comment and I'll get that out of the way first. As I have indicated, I believe that I will have more success working on some of the fringe areas of healthcare with openEHR. Therefore I tend to talk to providers that are not in the main; primary care/family medicine/general practice areas. I have been told by more than one of these folks that they didn't feel very welcome to participate on this (Clinical) list on issues that concerned their areas. Whether it was lack of feedback on questions or actual comments about currently focusing on archetypes for more general medicine. A bit more consciousness about welcoming new people might be in order. :-) Now for a few positive suggestions for the group and for individuals. Some of you may already be doing some of these things but in my experience in building open source teams they have helped me. 1. There are more than 450 members registered on this (Clinical) list. With a few more than that on the technical list. Many are duplicates (like myself). I would guess that at least 75% of the Clinical list members have downloaded and tinkered with one of the archetype editors. Probably created a few and then said; Now what? No software to use them on (hopefully OSHIP will soon help with that) no place for peer review and feedback. I suggest a section on the SVN server labeled 'community' with the correct folder structure underneath like the other areas. A group of the experts should receive an email each time a commit is made to this section. One of the experts then provides some kind of feed back on that commit. Maybe some of them are good enough to be moved into the CKM for consideration? Maybe the experts can provide enough feedback that these early community committers get better. It is clearly true that Sam, Heather, the NHS group and a handful of others cannot possibly build all the archetypes needed. Sure, you'll get a lot of junk archetypes to sort through in the beginning. You'll also need to spend more time in education but there are a lot of resources on the website and wiki that you can point to. But people like to participate in something meaningful. If they enjoy it, they'll tell a friend. It shouldn't be too difficult to setup a web page to show people when to get an SVN client along with a name and email registration space where they can be sent a SVN password automatically. Open this are up to the world. If it gets completely out of control then change the rules or shut it down. Right now there is no way to encourage "the crowd" to participate and share their wisdom. 2. When you go to meetings and conferences. Do not hang out with openEHR people. Meet new professionals and have a 15-30 sec comment about how we are turning over the data design of healthcare applications to the healthcare providers. Give them the URLs to get an editor and to the community SVN website along with the mailing list info. Do not try to explain openEHR or even archetypes to them at that point. Even if they ask; give them a little more info and encourage them to join the community. Leave them wanting to learn more. 3. Post comments on blog articles and healthcare related sites/online magazines. Try one of these: http://www.hitsphere.com/ 4. Prepare a guest blog entry. In fact two of those on the above site have asked me and are waiting for me to prepare guest postings on openEHR for their sites. Most of these guys WELCOME contributed content that is of interest to their readers. 5. When you see stuff that is blatantly bull$$%$%^ on blogs and online magazines, do not hesitate to say so. If you really believe in what you are saying and doing then let people know. Certainly people like David Kibbe have no problem with saying that CCR is the greatest thing to happen to healthcare while at the same time thinking that openEHR is an open source EMR project. Don't be afraid to put your ideas and convictions out there. It usually only takes a few minutes. If we spend all of our time discussing openEHR related matters on these lists then we are only "preaching to the choir" and not recruiting new people with new ideas. Well, that's my top five. I hope they help promote and expand the community. Cheers, Tim -- Timothy Cook, MSc Health Informatics Research & Development Services LinkedIn Profile:http://www.linkedin.com/in/timothywaynecook Skype ID == timothy.cook ************************************************************** *You may get my Public GPG key from popular keyservers or * *from this link http://timothywayne.cook.googlepages.com/home* ************************************************************** -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: oe_trick.png Type: image/png Size: 7092 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.openehr.org/mailman/private/openehr-technical_lists.openehr.org/attachments/20090202/b0fe4058/attachment.png> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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