I attended the Open Source Healthcare Alliance Annual Meeting which was held on September 6 and 7, at the Forte PostHouse Hotel, Kensington, London United Kingdom. OSHCA "is a community of people in the health care and informatics industries that promotes the open source software concept in health care. OSHCA helps policy makers, commercial enterprises, and users take advantage of the benefits of open source." Glyn Moody, Computer journalist and author of "Rebel Code", a history of the Open Source Movement, gave a keynote speech. Other Open Source developers also gave presentations, such as Dr. Horst Herb, the creator of GNUMed, and Dr. Andrew Ho, developer of the OIO libraries. The general consensus was Open Source was an ideal tool for Healthcare Software and that among the stumbling blocks to its widespread adoption was the ignorance about it among policy makers and decision makers (read: government). Dr. Ed Hammond, President-Elect of the American Medical Informatics Association, revealed his plan to start open source software applications development project, especially to create clnicial software to be used with mobile devices in healthcare (PDAs, wireless), so that a standard, interoperable, open source clinical management program can be used in all AMIA member institutions. This includes most major academic medical centers in the United States. I'm currently exploring an initiative for the Philippines to host a working group that will focus on Open Source Healthcare software for Developing Countries. More details can be found at http://www.oshca.org/ -- Inocencio Daniel Cortes Maramba, MD |http://upcm.net/%7eidcm/ Assistant Professor, Medical Informatics Unit|"Insert witty saying here" College of Medicine |[EMAIL PROTECTED] University of the Philippines Manila |"Dude, that kicks ass!" _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
