Firstly my apologies for any cross-posting, and for the organisation of my incoming mail, which drops the OpenHealth list, the OSHCA Members list (I think) and Hardhats into the same folder, becuase that is how I like it. Sometimes I don't notice which list a discussion is on.
> I feel this is neccesary as well. That is why I am trying to establish > the OSS SIG for HIMSS. There is a growing realisation that a stnadard that specifies a particular version of software is a very limp standard. This is good. Pat Evans said > It seems to me that there are many scattered attempts to bring OSS to > Healthcare, the OpenHealth mailing list, OSCHA, Open-Nurse/OSWG for > IMIA, and my attempts to start the OSS SIG. As well as many > idividauls/groups developing software for Healthcare. Looks like the > real challenge is to start pulling all these initiatives together and > supporting each other. I still see OSHCA as an interset of several other orgs. AMIA I expect has several interests, and while it should ideally have a SIG on OSS it would be a pity if that SIG was entirely distinct form OSHCA or vice versa. One day OSHCA will have done its job, and will dissolve itself, members continuing in their othr overlapping orgs. Until then, I think we should do whatever we have to to keep it effective, and comfortable, as a broad front on a single issue. Among our roles are to ensure any SIG members of other orgs can be well-informed, to provide a forum where SIGS can discuss matters, and to collect best practice and success and failure stories. Tolerance and diversity do need to be part of the group ethos. I see us as a little less philosophical than the FSF (www.fsf.org) but equally, I'd like to see a quietly growing collection of philosophy papers as well as some historical and geographical studies. Whether this would be best handled as a Wiki, or as a book possibly consciously echoing the nature of the O'Reilly book on Open Source is unclear to me - both maybe. I think that OSCHA chapters or subgroups affiliates franchisees or fellow-travellers should be establishing contacts with political organisations, and with the press, and that given the single issue-ness it is better to be identified as OSHCA than as an AMIA or BHIA or PHCSG or whatver SIG member, but that Open SOurce is a wide enough subject that we are as well off not trying to handle all of it even in medicine. -- From one of the Linux desktops of Dr Adrian Midgley http://www.defoam.net/
