Re: [openhealth] Resurrecting OSHCA - a review
Hi Molly,, by and large I agree with the tenor of the statements below, but believe they need some refinement...see below... Dr Molly Cheah wrote: I'm making this change on the Vision Statement: Vision: Free and Open Source Health Care Software will provide a viable and sustainable alternative in mainstream ICT for positive impact in health outcomes as adjunct to building a global information (knowledge?) society. I would like to add the word solidarity in the vision statement above, but don't know how. personally, I wouldn't try to add such a political word. I think sustainable is an important word as it is... I've also found these 3 interesting points in the oshca.org web-site under Charter: * Promotes and helps the formation of development consortia for health care related projects * Solicits membership from strategic organizations * Helps projects find funding and reach critical mass The principles outlined at the old web-site may be worth keeping: *Principles* /Promote a globally sustainable approach/ Open source software has global application. OSHCA will encourage approaches that seek active participation by users, developers, and policy makers from all parts of the world. I think we need to be careful with statements like these - open source doesn't have any more global application than closed source other than by the mundane fact of being free or more easily available (but some closed source things are cheap and very easily available as well...) It would be better in my view to say something like open source software developmemnt encourages global collaboration. /Stay lightweight and flexible/ In the spirit of open source where development is user and needs driven, facilitation needs to support highly desirable dynamism, adaptability, and flexibility. This approach seeks to facilitate natural processes that produce unprecedented quality, usability, and cost effectiveness. hmmm...this sounds nice, but I would prefer more concrete statements - what is this bit really trying to say? Something about adaptability, flexibility - these are qualities of the deployed software; natural processes - not sure what that really means; quality - too general a word; usabilitydoes open source create greater usability? In general, we need to be precise and concise! /Be open to diverse opinions and technologies/ OSHCA is inclusive of all health care-related open source activities. In an open source world, the success of an idea, standard, or product is measured by its practical use. I absolutely agree with the second statement, but this is unrelated to the first, which is about OSHCA being open etc... /Ethical Deployment/ OSHCA's focus is the legal and ethical deployment of reliable and robust open source systems in all areas of health care. This means meeting or exceeding current standards and working with legislative bodies to encourage the inclusion of open source principals in their policies. meeting or exceeding current standards - this is tricky one...and I don't know that it is connected with ethics I've also drafted these activities: *Activities* 1. OSHCA Conference 2. Maintain OSHCA web-portal 3. Maintain database of open source health care softwares 4. Maintain database of open source programmers 5. Maintain database of individuals, non-profits and commercial enterprises supporting and maintaining open source health care softwares 6. Form groups on developing guidelines on health information standards, quality control on open source software development, etc. Molly Dr Molly Cheah wrote: I agree that we need to look at existing organisations for refining what OSHCA should be. Another similar organisation is http://www.nosi.net, a nonprofit Open Source Initiative to bridge the gap between nonprofits and the open source communities. Thomas had also added additional reasons for resurrecting OSHCA. The discussion appears slow in coming out with suggestions. Are most people still on holidays? :) What I've done is, assuming that the vision goes beyond organising conferences (which I consider as an activity), I've drafted (very roughly) the vision and outline some mission statements. Feel free to edit, merge, add, minus ... Arrange them in terms of priority... We may want to have objectives, goals, charter, principles etc. listed now, but not necessary at this juncture. All views are welcomed. Vision FOSS healthcare solutions (systems?) will provide a viable and sustainable alternative in mainstream ICT for positive impact in health outcomes as adjunct to building a global information (knowledge?) society.* Mission* 1. Advocacy role to promote to policy makers the concept of open source in healthcare so as to adopt or give equal opportunity to open source
Re: [openhealth] Resurrecting OSHCA - a review
This discussion about OSCHA reminds me of an another organization I know very well called N-TEN (NonProfit Technology Enterprise Network). NTEN is a membership organization formed to promote the use of appropriate and effective ICTs by NPOs/NGOs. It's members include the NPOs/NGOs, the funders, the consultants and organizations who provide support to these organizations, and the developers and strategic thinkers who design and build the tools. Lots of interesting people at the table. Internally, they are a lean organization (3 full-time staff) with their major activity being a popular conference once a year. They sponsor several very active listserves, lots of local membership clubs who meet regularly, specialty conferences (like one on ICTs and Humanitarian Relief), and they do online seminars/discussions/presentations. They really function as a way for people to find one another and hold discussions about what's happening. Their major problem is that they are far too US-centric. They are struggling to internationalize their focus, and recently hired a new Executive Director to help in that effort. http://www.nten.org/ When we discuss resurrecting OSCHA, I think it's important to look at similar organizations with similar deliverables. Successful or not, we can look at the evolution, the best practices, and the lessons learned from these groups, and fast track our conversation. There are lots of blueprints and blueprint experts out there, and it's easier to edit an existing plan(s) than to build from scratch. imho Bill Lester -- William A. Lester CIO/Director of Technology EngenderHealth 440 Ninth Avenue New York, NY 10001 (Office) 212.561.8002 (e-Mail) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (URL) www.engenderhealth.org The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet. [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1/15/2006 11:10 PM I think that Will actually is proposing a vision, one which I whole-heartedly agree. The vision is that OSCHA is a vehicle for people to meet. This list is the best source of meeting of the minds I have found but is nothing compared to face to face. That is really what we do not have... Regards, Fred Trotter [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/openhealth/ * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [openhealth] Resurrecting OSHCA - a review
Hi Joseph, Could you tell me what incorporation mean, so I can understand why, to the question what happens if that person leaves the organization?, the simple answer the organization finds someone else is not valid ? Cheers, Philippe PS : Christian, you can count me for Oshca, since I believe that this (virtual) organization has already done a pretty good job having many of us meet physically and build genuine friendships among the community. One very practical reason for incoporation, assuming there is interest in organizing conferences as we did in the past is that it makes it much easier to handle money. Without this every event is subject to a zero based budget modelwe were lucky...the four conferences we organized all had sponsors who covered the risk and the costs. T The primary concern that comes to mind regarding incorporation is what happens when there is a transition in managementmost countries AFAIK require at least one director to be a citizen of that countrywhat happens if that person leaves the organization? Joseph Christian Heller wrote: Hi Molly, some weeks ago, about 22 of us mailing list members expressed their support for incorporating OSHCA. I take the liberty to list those: - Molly Cheah - Brian Bray - Adrian Midgley - Fred Trotter - Tim Cook - Christian Heller - Joseph Dal Molin - David Chan - Nandalal Gunaratne - K.S. Bhaskar - Thaddeus N. Albers - Mike McCoy (indirectly through Joseph Dal Molin) - Jubal John (interest in background of the key people involved) - 7 further people who voted on the second mailing list-question - Alric O'Connor - Thomas Beale (here I stopped counting) -- about 22 This is not that many of far more than a hundred list readers. However, it is not few either. It is a start. ... champion, promote, co-ordinate, collaborate etc open source applications in health care. ... The Open Source Health Care Alliance is a collaborative forum to ... OSHCA is a community of people in the health care and informatics Nevertheless, I was asking myself again for reasons to get OSHCA incorporated: A website might suffice to promote OSHCA; a mailing list to collaborate; coordination between projects may not necessarily be needed as every project follows its own ideas/technologies anyway. A common website could serve as portal providing lists and evaluations of our projects -- what was lately asked for in this list again. But there are already plenty of such portals (Debian-Med etc.). Some of these portals just lack the necessary continuity and updates. Most of us have their own project and invest considerable time into it. I for one do not have many resources and will to contribute much to organisational/paper work for OSHCA, since concrete results will be few. It is my guess that many other project developers have similar thoughts. So let us look for more points speaking for an incorporated OSHCA! A list of concrete reasons to incorporate OSHCA coming to my mind: - organise conferences (seems to be easier for booking places etc.) - get publicity (taken more seriously than a loose group of people) - approach governments and large corporations - ask for funding If somebody sees more points, please add to this list! It should, in my opinion, only contain points that *cannot* be achieved with mailing list/ website/ loose group of people alone. Once we have identified these points, they may become OSHCA's focus. [..] next steps to form the protem committee and get OSHCA incorporated. We also need to decide where OSHCA should be incorporated - developed or developing country and then zoom into deciding the specific country. Correct steps. It doesn't matter much to me in which country OSHCA gets incorporated, as long as it is a democratic one, and without ruling-the-world tendencies. Perhaps a developing country is even better, since it may better know what is really needed urgently. My apologies for this lengthy e-mail. Just to make up for the lapse :) I still have the list of volunteers for the protem committee. In between someone requested for a short write-up of each as well Such a write-up should also contain which open source software (OSS) project or other organisation people represent, i.e. in which area of OSS they are active. Well done, Molly! ... and a quite short extract (as I like it). Thanks, Christian YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS * Visit your group openhealth http://groups.yahoo.com/group/openhealth on the web. * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/. . Yahoo! Groups Links Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your
Re: [openhealth] Resurrecting OSHCA - a review
Incorporation is the establishment of an organization as a legal entitye,g, in France a company with SRL appended to its name has legal status. You don't have to incorporate in many countries to be a companyyou can be a sole proprietorbut this applies to individuals only. The issue relates to the specific laws of incorporation for a countrymy point was that one must think a few years forward and determine if there are any requirements that must be retained to be legaly incorporated in that countrythere are also tax filing issues...and therefore potential language requirements. These aren't show stoppers.just important issues to consider. Joseph Philippe AMELINE wrote: Hi Joseph, Could you tell me what incorporation mean, so I can understand why, to the question what happens if that person leaves the organization?, the simple answer the organization finds someone else is not valid ? Cheers, Philippe PS : Christian, you can count me for Oshca, since I believe that this (virtual) organization has already done a pretty good job having many of us meet physically and build genuine friendships among the community. One very practical reason for incoporation, assuming there is interest in organizing conferences as we did in the past is that it makes it much easier to handle money. Without this every event is subject to a zero based budget modelwe were lucky...the four conferences we organized all had sponsors who covered the risk and the costs. T The primary concern that comes to mind regarding incorporation is what happens when there is a transition in managementmost countries AFAIK require at least one director to be a citizen of that countrywhat happens if that person leaves the organization? Joseph Christian Heller wrote: Hi Molly, some weeks ago, about 22 of us mailing list members expressed their support for incorporating OSHCA. I take the liberty to list those: - Molly Cheah - Brian Bray - Adrian Midgley - Fred Trotter - Tim Cook - Christian Heller - Joseph Dal Molin - David Chan - Nandalal Gunaratne - K.S. Bhaskar - Thaddeus N. Albers - Mike McCoy (indirectly through Joseph Dal Molin) - Jubal John (interest in background of the key people involved) - 7 further people who voted on the second mailing list-question - Alric O'Connor - Thomas Beale (here I stopped counting) -- about 22 This is not that many of far more than a hundred list readers. However, it is not few either. It is a start. ... champion, promote, co-ordinate, collaborate etc open source applications in health care. ... The Open Source Health Care Alliance is a collaborative forum to ... OSHCA is a community of people in the health care and informatics Nevertheless, I was asking myself again for reasons to get OSHCA incorporated: A website might suffice to promote OSHCA; a mailing list to collaborate; coordination between projects may not necessarily be needed as every project follows its own ideas/technologies anyway. A common website could serve as portal providing lists and evaluations of our projects -- what was lately asked for in this list again. But there are already plenty of such portals (Debian-Med etc.). Some of these portals just lack the necessary continuity and updates. Most of us have their own project and invest considerable time into it. I for one do not have many resources and will to contribute much to organisational/paper work for OSHCA, since concrete results will be few. It is my guess that many other project developers have similar thoughts. So let us look for more points speaking for an incorporated OSHCA! A list of concrete reasons to incorporate OSHCA coming to my mind: - organise conferences (seems to be easier for booking places etc.) - get publicity (taken more seriously than a loose group of people) - approach governments and large corporations - ask for funding If somebody sees more points, please add to this list! It should, in my opinion, only contain points that *cannot* be achieved with mailing list/ website/ loose group of people alone. Once we have identified these points, they may become OSHCA's focus. [..] next steps to form the protem committee and get OSHCA incorporated. We also need to decide where OSHCA should be incorporated - developed or developing country and then zoom into deciding the specific country. Correct steps. It doesn't matter much to me in which country OSHCA gets incorporated, as long as it is a democratic one, and without ruling-the-world tendencies. Perhaps a developing country is even better, since it may better know what is really needed urgently. My apologies for this lengthy e-mail. Just to make up for the lapse :) I still have the list of volunteers for the protem committee. In between
Re: [openhealth] Resurrecting OSHCA - a review
Christian, Molly All, I'm neutral on the issue of incorporation. If it can help then I'm for it. But I don't want the discussion on incorporation to distract us from the possibility of convening our next OSHCA conference. I'm a strong advocate of having our next OSCHA Conference, with or without incorporation. I've started raising the question of support for a conference with some of the organizations I work with. Here's how I describe it: Can your organization host a three day conference for 150 people, providing auditorium, break out rooms, technical support (wifi + audio-visual facilities with staff), food (continental breakfast plus full lunches) and facilities support (pre-conference planning, attendee registration services, facility access and security, etc). I explain that the conference underwriting has to be substantial because international attendees will need to pay for travel and keep their on site costs to lodging and incidental daily expenses. Consider this post the discussion fork that poses the question: What month in 2006 is best for an OSCHA meeting? I think it goes without saying that many of us will be in Brisbane in August 2007 http://www.medinfo2007.org/ But maybe we can also meet in 2006. As it is still January, now is a good time to focus on this question. With best regards, [wr] - - - - - - - On Jan 14, 2006, at 2:31 PM, Christian Heller wrote: Hi Molly, some weeks ago, about 22 of us mailing list members expressed their support for incorporating OSHCA. I take the liberty to list those: - Molly Cheah - Brian Bray - Adrian Midgley - Fred Trotter - Tim Cook - Christian Heller - Joseph Dal Molin - David Chan - Nandalal Gunaratne - K.S. Bhaskar - Thaddeus N. Albers - Mike McCoy (indirectly through Joseph Dal Molin) - Jubal John (interest in background of the key people involved) - 7 further people who voted on the second mailing list-question - Alric O'Connor - Thomas Beale (here I stopped counting) -- about 22 This is not that many of far more than a hundred list readers. However, it is not few either. It is a start. ... champion, promote, co-ordinate, collaborate etc open source applications in health care. ... The Open Source Health Care Alliance is a collaborative forum to ... OSHCA is a community of people in the health care and informatics Nevertheless, I was asking myself again for reasons to get OSHCA incorporated: A website might suffice to promote OSHCA; a mailing list to collaborate; coordination between projects may not necessarily be needed as every project follows its own ideas/technologies anyway. A common website could serve as portal providing lists and evaluations of our projects -- what was lately asked for in this list again. But there are already plenty of such portals (Debian-Med etc.). Some of these portals just lack the necessary continuity and updates. Most of us have their own project and invest considerable time into it. I for one do not have many resources and will to contribute much to organisational/paper work for OSHCA, since concrete results will be few. It is my guess that many other project developers have similar thoughts. So let us look for more points speaking for an incorporated OSHCA! A list of concrete reasons to incorporate OSHCA coming to my mind: - organise conferences (seems to be easier for booking places etc.) - get publicity (taken more seriously than a loose group of people) - approach governments and large corporations - ask for funding If somebody sees more points, please add to this list! It should, in my opinion, only contain points that *cannot* be achieved with mailing list/ website/ loose group of people alone. Once we have identified these points, they may become OSHCA's focus. [..] next steps to form the protem committee and get OSHCA incorporated. We also need to decide where OSHCA should be incorporated - developed or developing country and then zoom into deciding the specific country. Correct steps. It doesn't matter much to me in which country OSHCA gets incorporated, as long as it is a democratic one, and without ruling-the-world tendencies. Perhaps a developing country is even better, since it may better know what is really needed urgently. My apologies for this lengthy e-mail. Just to make up for the lapse :) I still have the list of volunteers for the protem committee. In between someone requested for a short write-up of each as well Such a write-up should also contain which open source software (OSS) project or other organisation people represent, i.e. in which area of OSS they are active. Well done, Molly! ... and a quite short extract (as I like it). Thanks, Christian Yahoo! Groups Links [wr] - - - - - - - - will ross mendocino informatics 216 west perkins street, suite 206 ukiah, california 95482 usa 707.272.7255 [voice]
Re: [openhealth] Resurrecting OSHCA - a review
Will, When we're discussing resurrecting OSHCA, we're going beyond organising conferences, which organisations like IMIA,AMIA or any organisations advocating open source can do from time to time. We've also gone beyond the debate on the need for incorporation; the issues, pros and cons are in the discussion lists' archives. As pointed out by Christian, the recent discussion had agreed to the idea of resurrecting OSHCA, I wanted some help in refining the Vision and Mission Statements before moving to the structure and governance issues relating to the incorporation processes. Joseph is ahead of me on that score :). As I pointed out to him privately on skype, an example of a successful organisation recently incorporated to address the digital divide and to build a knowledge society is GKP (http://www.globalknowledge.org). I'm not saying we should copy their setup completely, but we can study their concept, structure and governance framework. We can then adapt for OSHCA after we have determined what OSHCA should be. If organising conferences is an agreed activity, the office bearers will do the needful. If the open source healthcare community wish to contribute and make an impact on the WSIS Tunis commitments (http://www.itu.int/wsis/) and the MDGs, three of which are direct health MDGs (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/), we need to look beyond organising conferences. That's the reason I would like to discuss more widely OSHCA's vision and mission statements (and objectives) first. Molly Will Ross wrote: Christian, Molly All, I'm neutral on the issue of incorporation. If it can help then I'm for it. But I don't want the discussion on incorporation to distract us from the possibility of convening our next OSHCA conference. I'm a strong advocate of having our next OSCHA Conference, with or without incorporation. I've started raising the question of support for a conference with some of the organizations I work with. Here's how I describe it: Can your organization host a three day conference for 150 people, providing auditorium, break out rooms, technical support (wifi + audio-visual facilities with staff), food (continental breakfast plus full lunches) and facilities support (pre-conference planning, attendee registration services, facility access and security, etc). I explain that the conference underwriting has to be substantial because international attendees will need to pay for travel and keep their on site costs to lodging and incidental daily expenses. Consider this post the discussion fork that poses the question: What month in 2006 is best for an OSCHA meeting? I think it goes without saying that many of us will be in Brisbane in August 2007 http://www.medinfo2007.org/ But maybe we can also meet in 2006. As it is still January, now is a good time to focus on this question. With best regards, [wr] - - - - - - - On Jan 14, 2006, at 2:31 PM, Christian Heller wrote: Hi Molly, some weeks ago, about 22 of us mailing list members expressed their support for incorporating OSHCA. I take the liberty to list those: - Molly Cheah - Brian Bray - Adrian Midgley - Fred Trotter - Tim Cook - Christian Heller - Joseph Dal Molin - David Chan - Nandalal Gunaratne - K.S. Bhaskar - Thaddeus N. Albers - Mike McCoy (indirectly through Joseph Dal Molin) - Jubal John (interest in background of the key people involved) - 7 further people who voted on the second mailing list-question - Alric O'Connor - Thomas Beale (here I stopped counting) -- about 22 This is not that many of far more than a hundred list readers. However, it is not few either. It is a start. ... champion, promote, co-ordinate, collaborate etc open source applications in health care. ... The Open Source Health Care Alliance is a collaborative forum to ... OSHCA is a community of people in the health care and informatics Nevertheless, I was asking myself again for reasons to get OSHCA incorporated: A website might suffice to promote OSHCA; a mailing list to collaborate; coordination between projects may not necessarily be needed as every project follows its own ideas/technologies anyway. A common website could serve as portal providing lists and evaluations of our projects -- what was lately asked for in this list again. But there are already plenty of such portals (Debian-Med etc.). Some of these portals just lack the necessary continuity and updates. Most of us have their own project and invest considerable time into it. I for one do not have many resources and will to contribute much to organisational/paper work for OSHCA, since concrete results will be few. It is my guess that many other project developers have similar thoughts. So let us look for more points speaking for an incorporated OSHCA! A list of concrete reasons to incorporate OSHCA coming to my mind: - organise conferences (seems to be easier for booking places etc.) - get publicity
Re: [openhealth] Resurrecting OSHCA - a review
I think that Will actually is proposing a vision, one which I whole-heartedly agree. The vision is that OSCHA is a vehicle for people to meet. This list is the best source of meeting of the minds I have found but is nothing compared to face to face. That is really what we do not have... Regards, Fred Trotter On 1/15/06, Dr Molly Cheah [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Will, When we're discussing resurrecting OSHCA, we're going beyond organising conferences, which organisations like IMIA,AMIA or any organisations advocating open source can do from time to time. We've also gone beyond the debate on the need for incorporation; the issues, pros and cons are in the discussion lists' archives. As pointed out by Christian, the recent discussion had agreed to the idea of resurrecting OSHCA, I wanted some help in refining the Vision and Mission Statements before moving to the structure and governance issues relating to the incorporation processes. Joseph is ahead of me on that score :). As I pointed out to him privately on skype, an example of a successful organisation recently incorporated to address the digital divide and to build a knowledge society is GKP (http://www.globalknowledge.org). I'm not saying we should copy their setup completely, but we can study their concept, structure and governance framework. We can then adapt for OSHCA after we have determined what OSHCA should be. If organising conferences is an agreed activity, the office bearers will do the needful. If the open source healthcare community wish to contribute and make an impact on the WSIS Tunis commitments (http://www.itu.int/wsis/) and the MDGs, three of which are direct health MDGs (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/), we need to look beyond organising conferences. That's the reason I would like to discuss more widely OSHCA's vision and mission statements (and objectives) first. Molly Will Ross wrote: Christian, Molly All, I'm neutral on the issue of incorporation. If it can help then I'm for it. But I don't want the discussion on incorporation to distract us from the possibility of convening our next OSHCA conference. I'm a strong advocate of having our next OSCHA Conference, with or without incorporation. I've started raising the question of support for a conference with some of the organizations I work with. Here's how I describe it: Can your organization host a three day conference for 150 people, providing auditorium, break out rooms, technical support (wifi + audio-visual facilities with staff), food (continental breakfast plus full lunches) and facilities support (pre-conference planning, attendee registration services, facility access and security, etc). I explain that the conference underwriting has to be substantial because international attendees will need to pay for travel and keep their on site costs to lodging and incidental daily expenses. Consider this post the discussion fork that poses the question: What month in 2006 is best for an OSCHA meeting? I think it goes without saying that many of us will be in Brisbane in August 2007 http://www.medinfo2007.org/ But maybe we can also meet in 2006. As it is still January, now is a good time to focus on this question. With best regards, [wr] - - - - - - - On Jan 14, 2006, at 2:31 PM, Christian Heller wrote: Hi Molly, some weeks ago, about 22 of us mailing list members expressed their support for incorporating OSHCA. I take the liberty to list those: - Molly Cheah - Brian Bray - Adrian Midgley - Fred Trotter - Tim Cook - Christian Heller - Joseph Dal Molin - David Chan - Nandalal Gunaratne - K.S. Bhaskar - Thaddeus N. Albers - Mike McCoy (indirectly through Joseph Dal Molin) - Jubal John (interest in background of the key people involved) - 7 further people who voted on the second mailing list-question - Alric O'Connor - Thomas Beale (here I stopped counting) -- about 22 This is not that many of far more than a hundred list readers. However, it is not few either. It is a start. ... champion, promote, co-ordinate, collaborate etc open source applications in health care. ... The Open Source Health Care Alliance is a collaborative forum to ... OSHCA is a community of people in the health care and informatics Nevertheless, I was asking myself again for reasons to get OSHCA incorporated: A website might suffice to promote OSHCA; a mailing list to collaborate; coordination between projects may not necessarily be needed as every project follows its own ideas/technologies anyway. A common website could serve as portal providing lists and evaluations of our projects -- what was lately asked for in this list again. But there are already plenty of such portals (Debian-Med etc.). Some of these portals just lack the necessary continuity and updates. Most of us have their own project and invest considerable time into it. I for one do not have
Re: [openhealth] Resurrecting OSHCA - a review
Proposal so far OSHCA Vision OSCHA is a vehicle for people to meet face to face. Mission?? Objectives??? Molly p.s. Previously, OSHCA The Open Source Health Care Alliance is a collaborative forum to promote and facilitate open source software in human and veterinary healthcare. 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. Fred Trotter wrote: I think that Will actually is proposing a vision, one which I whole-heartedly agree. The vision is that OSCHA is a vehicle for people to meet. This list is the best source of meeting of the minds I have found but is nothing compared to face to face. That is really what we do not have... Regards, Fred Trotter On 1/15/06, Dr Molly Cheah [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Will, When we're discussing resurrecting OSHCA, we're going beyond organising conferences, which organisations like IMIA,AMIA or any organisations advocating open source can do from time to time. We've also gone beyond the debate on the need for incorporation; the issues, pros and cons are in the discussion lists' archives. As pointed out by Christian, the recent discussion had agreed to the idea of resurrecting OSHCA, I wanted some help in refining the Vision and Mission Statements before moving to the structure and governance issues relating to the incorporation processes. Joseph is ahead of me on that score :). As I pointed out to him privately on skype, an example of a successful organisation recently incorporated to address the digital divide and to build a knowledge society is GKP (http://www.globalknowledge.org). I'm not saying we should copy their setup completely, but we can study their concept, structure and governance framework. We can then adapt for OSHCA after we have determined what OSHCA should be. If organising conferences is an agreed activity, the office bearers will do the needful. If the open source healthcare community wish to contribute and make an impact on the WSIS Tunis commitments (http://www.itu.int/wsis/) and the MDGs, three of which are direct health MDGs (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/), we need to look beyond organising conferences. That's the reason I would like to discuss more widely OSHCA's vision and mission statements (and objectives) first. Molly Will Ross wrote: Christian, Molly All, I'm neutral on the issue of incorporation. If it can help then I'm for it. But I don't want the discussion on incorporation to distract us from the possibility of convening our next OSHCA conference. I'm a strong advocate of having our next OSCHA Conference, with or without incorporation. I've started raising the question of support for a conference with some of the organizations I work with. Here's how I describe it: Can your organization host a three day conference for 150 people, providing auditorium, break out rooms, technical support (wifi + audio-visual facilities with staff), food (continental breakfast plus full lunches) and facilities support (pre-conference planning, attendee registration services, facility access and security, etc). I explain that the conference underwriting has to be substantial because international attendees will need to pay for travel and keep their on site costs to lodging and incidental daily expenses. Consider this post the discussion fork that poses the question: What month in 2006 is best for an OSCHA meeting? I think it goes without saying that many of us will be in Brisbane in August 2007 http://www.medinfo2007.org/ But maybe we can also meet in 2006. As it is still January, now is a good time to focus on this question. With best regards, [wr] - - - - - - - On Jan 14, 2006, at 2:31 PM, Christian Heller wrote: Hi Molly, some weeks ago, about 22 of us mailing list members expressed their support for incorporating OSHCA. I take the liberty to list those: - Molly Cheah - Brian Bray - Adrian Midgley - Fred Trotter - Tim Cook - Christian Heller - Joseph Dal Molin - David Chan - Nandalal Gunaratne - K.S. Bhaskar - Thaddeus N. Albers - Mike McCoy (indirectly through Joseph Dal Molin) - Jubal John (interest in background of the key people involved) - 7 further people who voted on the second mailing list-question - Alric O'Connor - Thomas Beale (here I stopped counting) -- about 22 This is not that many of far more than a hundred list readers. However, it is not few either. It is a start. ... champion, promote, co-ordinate, collaborate etc open source applications in health care. ... The Open Source Health Care Alliance is a collaborative forum to ... OSHCA is a community of people in the health care and informatics Nevertheless, I was asking myself again for reasons to get OSHCA incorporated: A website might suffice to promote OSHCA; a mailing list to
Re: [openhealth] Resurrecting OSHCA - a review
Fred Trotter wrote: I think that Will actually is proposing a vision, one which I whole-heartedly agree. The vision is that OSCHA is a vehicle for people to meet. This list is the best source of meeting of the minds I have found but is nothing compared to face to face. That is really what we do not have... Regards, Fred Trotter Does this community see itself/OSHCA as a place to meet - only? If so it is about providing a place for conversations and networking. If it sees itself as something more, i.e. a body that tries to formulate some strategic ideas for presentation to other organisations, e.g. governments, then that is something different. It would mean that conferences (and the list itself) are activities focussed (at least partly) on some kind of outcomes. I can imagine OSHCA acting in this way for the following reasons: - providing information resources to open source health software developers - making recommendations about how open source software should be used - providing guidelines for quality control of open source software - making recommendations about health information standards (presumably based on use in software) This is not just a question of scope (most of us are interested in most of the above topics to some level), but of the remit or charter of the organisation. Does it want to produce anything? My recommendation based on 5 years in standards development (alongside software building) is that the community should try to develop some guidelines and recommendations, for the reason that it is an implementation-based community, and as such it can test any such principle or guideline. thoughts? - thomas beale Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/openhealth/ * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
RE: [openhealth] Resurrecting OSHCA - a review
Dear all, Regarding the latest issue whether OSHCA will become (yet another) a formal organisation or not reminds me the fact that in my country (Turkey) where negotiation and win-win culture/mentality is still far from reality we end up with many fragmented organizations with the same members and do nothingA tragi-comic example is the current situation with Anatomic Pathology: We have 5 formal organizations each having nearly the same vision and objectives but due to administrative and human-related constraints they hardly do anything for the good of its members or the society...And unbelievable they have just been considering to establish a Federation to embrace all organisations! To do what? The driver behind all these is the inevitable I am smarter and superior; so I must rule em all kind of ego-centric thinking I agree with Thomas and some others; so that I would like to see OSHCA in the first place to deliver what is intended as a virtual organisation...The simple reason is not to spend already scarce resources (time, money, goodwill) for non-core/administrative activities. Only then we may consider changing the shell (i.e. incorporate) if it is proven that we really need that... For example, I have a very urgent issue related with OS SW in healthcare in Turkey: Many people do not speak English; and we have the discussion list of Turkish Medical Informatics Association (www.turkmia.org http://www.turkmia.org/ ) with some 300+ distinguished members. Unfortunately it is moderated and controlled by some which are biased towards some commercial/political direction. I would like to have a sublist of OSHCA - maybe called as OSHCA-TR which will be affiliated by the umbrella organisation but have discussions local to that environment also in TR language...That would be a great thing as people here really need to be informed about Open Source and Free SW in healthcare. And TR is a big country; we now have a very ambitious Turkish Health Information System Project in which we address both primary and upper layer healthcare services and have the EHR as the very kernel/enabling technologyThe problem is no one has any (neutral/realistic) idea how to accomplish this! OSHCA can formally help our government and industries along this journey...(And possibly get donation/consultancy fee like the leap frog in US) Best regards, Dr. Koray Atalag _ From: openhealth@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Thomas Beale Sent: 16 Ocak 2006 Pazartesi 06:50 To: openhealth@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [openhealth] Resurrecting OSHCA - a review Fred Trotter wrote: I think that Will actually is proposing a vision, one which I whole-heartedly agree. The vision is that OSCHA is a vehicle for people to meet. This list is the best source of meeting of the minds I have found but is nothing compared to face to face. That is really what we do not have... Regards, Fred Trotter Does this community see itself/OSHCA as a place to meet - only? If so it is about providing a place for conversations and networking. If it sees itself as something more, i.e. a body that tries to formulate some strategic ideas for presentation to other organisations, e.g. governments, then that is something different. It would mean that conferences (and the list itself) are activities focussed (at least partly) on some kind of outcomes. I can imagine OSHCA acting in this way for the following reasons: - providing information resources to open source health software developers - making recommendations about how open source software should be used - providing guidelines for quality control of open source software - making recommendations about health information standards (presumably based on use in software) This is not just a question of scope (most of us are interested in most of the above topics to some level), but of the remit or charter of the organisation. Does it want to produce anything? My recommendation based on 5 years in standards development (alongside software building) is that the community should try to develop some guidelines and recommendations, for the reason that it is an implementation-based community, and as such it can test any such principle or guideline. thoughts? - thomas beale SPONSORED LINKS Software http://groups.yahoo.com/gads?t=msk=Software+distributionw1=Software+distr ibutionw2=Salon+softwarew3=Medical+softwarew4=Software+associationw5=Sof tware+jewelryw6=Software+deploymentc=6s=142.sig=XcuzZXUhhqAa4nls1QYuCg distribution Salon http://groups.yahoo.com/gads?t=msk=Salon+softwarew1=Software+distribution w2=Salon+softwarew3=Medical+softwarew4=Software+associationw5=Software+j ewelryw6=Software+deploymentc=6s=142.sig=CW98GQRF3_rWnTxU62jsdA software Medical http://groups.yahoo.com/gads?t=msk=Medical+softwarew1=Software+distributi onw2=Salon+softwarew3=Medical+softwarew4=Software+associationw5=Software +jewelryw6=Software+deploymentc=6s
Re: [openhealth] Resurrecting OSHCA - a review
Hi Molly, some weeks ago, about 22 of us mailing list members expressed their support for incorporating OSHCA. I take the liberty to list those: - Molly Cheah - Brian Bray - Adrian Midgley - Fred Trotter - Tim Cook - Christian Heller - Joseph Dal Molin - David Chan - Nandalal Gunaratne - K.S. Bhaskar - Thaddeus N. Albers - Mike McCoy (indirectly through Joseph Dal Molin) - Jubal John (interest in background of the key people involved) - 7 further people who voted on the second mailing list-question - Alric O'Connor - Thomas Beale (here I stopped counting) -- about 22 This is not that many of far more than a hundred list readers. However, it is not few either. It is a start. ... champion, promote, co-ordinate, collaborate etc open source applications in health care. ... The Open Source Health Care Alliance is a collaborative forum to ... OSHCA is a community of people in the health care and informatics Nevertheless, I was asking myself again for reasons to get OSHCA incorporated: A website might suffice to promote OSHCA; a mailing list to collaborate; coordination between projects may not necessarily be needed as every project follows its own ideas/technologies anyway. A common website could serve as portal providing lists and evaluations of our projects -- what was lately asked for in this list again. But there are already plenty of such portals (Debian-Med etc.). Some of these portals just lack the necessary continuity and updates. Most of us have their own project and invest considerable time into it. I for one do not have many resources and will to contribute much to organisational/paper work for OSHCA, since concrete results will be few. It is my guess that many other project developers have similar thoughts. So let us look for more points speaking for an incorporated OSHCA! A list of concrete reasons to incorporate OSHCA coming to my mind: - organise conferences (seems to be easier for booking places etc.) - get publicity (taken more seriously than a loose group of people) - approach governments and large corporations - ask for funding If somebody sees more points, please add to this list! It should, in my opinion, only contain points that *cannot* be achieved with mailing list/ website/ loose group of people alone. Once we have identified these points, they may become OSHCA's focus. [..] next steps to form the protem committee and get OSHCA incorporated. We also need to decide where OSHCA should be incorporated - developed or developing country and then zoom into deciding the specific country. Correct steps. It doesn't matter much to me in which country OSHCA gets incorporated, as long as it is a democratic one, and without ruling-the-world tendencies. Perhaps a developing country is even better, since it may better know what is really needed urgently. My apologies for this lengthy e-mail. Just to make up for the lapse :) I still have the list of volunteers for the protem committee. In between someone requested for a short write-up of each as well Such a write-up should also contain which open source software (OSS) project or other organisation people represent, i.e. in which area of OSS they are active. Well done, Molly! ... and a quite short extract (as I like it). Thanks, Christian Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/openhealth/ * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
