On Sun, 2003-02-09 at 07:32, John S Gage wrote: > AAFP Seeks Partners to Support Open-Source Electronic Health Record > Initiative
Here's what AAFP ought to do IMVHO: 1) Engage someone (a sensible small or mid-sized multi-disciplinary group of informaticians) for maybe 12 months to: a) develop a thorough set of functional specifications b) flush out unrecognised stakeholders, issues and pitfalls 2) Engage an independent consultant to evaluate all existing open source solutions (including partially complete solutions) against the function specs. By solutions, I mean data models and standards, paradigms and approaches as well as software code bases. They also need to look at at least some commercial systems (and their underlying data models, of course). 3) Only then decide how to proceed: a) adopt and extend/complete an existing OSS system; b) purchase an existing commercial system and then release it as OSS; c) develop something new from scratch. I sincerely hope they recognise the need to hasten slowly. The "market failure" which is the motivation for this initiative has been there for many years, so there is no reason for AAFP to be panicked into getting a solution out immediately (except the impatience of its members for a better solution, but they must realise that all good things take time). Tim C
