Re: [openhealth] Re: [Fwd: [FOSS-PDI] OSHCA Conference - Preliminary Announcement]
Hello THomas, To give you an idea of the kind of thinking that could be exposed, here is my opinion: I think they should be open and freely usable - in fact I think the only sensible business model for standards development is to give them away free and charge some money for compliance testing. The development of standards can be quite costly as Stephen pointed out, is it possible to get money just by compliance testing? They could charge a licence fee for continuous use. What ISO and many other bodies do is completely wrong, and hence fails most of the time (there are far more ISO standards than are actually used, because people cannot even examine them for fitness without paying for them. Hence a vast amount of talking, time off and air miles are wasted on producing documents that never see the light of day). This is true. HL7 was also being criticised for going on and on and not producing anything useable. Just to continue on my software ecosystem comment a few posts back, I think this conference would be an opportunity to show more than just why open source is good in a general sense. We already have the proof that this is true in some areas, with category-topping efforts like Linux Apache. We also already have some great medical open source systems. We need to identify these great systems, from the good systems. Could you list a few you think are great? What we don't have is a standard-based, interoperable ecosystem of software that we can offer the industry as a whole. What I think we want is to show that we can build a cathedral, but do it in the bazaar. We need something that looks like objectweb.org, but in health. Putting openly developed standards together with openly developed software is the key to the future in my view, and we should be developing the necessary thinking now; the conference is an ideal opportunity to aim for exposing such ideas. Openly developed standards with openly developed software is my own favorite phrase too :-) Nandalal - thomas Sucker-punch spam with award-winning protection. Try the free Yahoo! Mail Beta. http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/features_spam.html
Re: [openhealth] Re: [Fwd: [FOSS-PDI] OSHCA Conference - Preliminary Announcement]
Nandalal Gunaratne wrote: Hello THomas, To give you an idea of the kind of thinking that could be exposed, here is my opinion: I think they should be open and freely usable - in fact I think the only sensible business model for standards development is to give them away free and charge some money for compliance testing. The development of standards can be quite costly as Stephen pointed out, is it possible to get money just by compliance testing? They could charge a licence fee for continuous use. well, obviously a god standards organisation would not do that. If it did, the community should abandon the standard. Clearly compliance testing is needed (otherwise there can be no trust - the same as food labelling). But in any case, money needs to come from other places - usually large organisations or governments, the EU etc. What ISO and many other bodies do is completely wrong, and hence fails most of the time (there are far more ISO standards than are actually used, because people cannot even examine them for fitness without paying for them. Hence a vast amount of talking, time off and air miles are wasted on producing documents that never see the light of day). This is true. HL7 was also being criticised for going on and on and not producing anything useable. I will try not to say anything there Just to continue on my software ecosystem comment a few posts back, I think this conference would be an opportunity to show more than just why open source is good in a general sense. We already have the proof that this is true in some areas, with category-topping efforts like Linux Apache. We also already have some great medical open source systems. We need to identify these great systems, from the good systems. Could you list a few you think are great? it depends on how you judge them. A practice management system can be good in pure functional terms, but may have poor semantics. This will be revealed when trying to do certain sorts of queries (e.g. differentiate between diagnosed problems and other references to problems that are not in fact diagnoses for the patient; constructing an interventions/medications list with current status on all interventions), and/or inability to interoperate well with other systems. Other systems may have good underlying models but only rough front-ends. Others here would be better placed to judge particular applications that are around now. I think what is important is that any half-decent OS health application can be made great or at least a lot better by moving towards identified standards for information, content models, service interfaces, terminology use, querying and many other things. Then each application writer is not forced to rewrite the whole stack every time; they can concentrate on what they really want to do. The outcome would be an emerging integrated system. At the moment I don't see this happening. - thomas
[openhealth] Re: [Fwd: [FOSS-PDI] OSHCA Conference - Preliminary Announcement]
-- Forwarded message -- From: Stephen Chu [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 08:04:43 +1030 Subject: Re: [Fwd: [FOSS-PDI] OSHCA Conference - Preliminary Announcement] Hi, Molly: I do not have any fear about the concept of openness in standards or software. On the contrary, I highly welcome and promote the concept. My concern is open software does not equate interoperability. Standards are required to ensure interoperability of hardware or software, open or closed. While many standards are open - e.g. HL7, ISO, some classification systems such as ICD, not all standards are. I was trying to plead the case of not to exclude standards that are not currently open while we examine the case of interoperability. I would like to see discussions on what non-open standards in health are essential to facilitating interoperability and how we can encourage or lobby those standards to migrate toward the open plank. My 2cent worth. Stephen On 1/19/07, *Molly Cheah* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Stephen (from APAMI list), Let me try and allay your fears on the concept of Openness in standards. I don't know how many from the APAMI list is also on the Openhealth list and there had been discussion already on this subject matter there. What I will do is to cross post my responses to the Openhealth list and extract whatever relevant discussion that had been posted there to this list. If anyone finds these cross posting incomplete please don't hesitate to chip in. I think this is a genuine attempt for those in the FOSS community to engage our colleagues supporting non-open formats (I hope I'm using the politically correct terms) without wanting to restrict or constrain anyone's viewpoints. None of us want a philosophical discussion either. Let me also state here that the programmes for the OSHCA conference are being massaged by the community to ensure that the deliberations at the conference and the conference output will be of benefit to all. Here's what I had in mind for the conference objectives as in the OSHCA web-portal. Clearly the objectives address OSHCA Vision and Mission Statements. 1. Share and review current FOSS applications in healthcare 2. Share and review current technologies in healthcare software 3. Conceptualise and define OSHCA's role in managing FOSS collaborative services 4. Explore the role of open standards in facilitating interoperable health information communication 5. Promote OSHCA and its activities particularly to IT and healthcare communities in Asia-Pacific region 6. Promote the advantages of using FOSS applications to managers of healthcare facilities in public and private sectors in the Asia-Pacific region. The emphasis on Asia-Pacific region is because of funding from UNDP-APDIP and subsequently our proposals for funding under IDRC's PAN Asia eHealth Research Network. Here's some views on the matter from the Openhealth list. Quoting Thomas Beale from the OpenEHR project I think that if we are to spend any time at all on this question, it should be couched in terms of what business model makes sense for standards development? And we should show why open source thinking has something to offer. To give you an idea of the kind of thinking that could be exposed, here is my opinion: I think they should be open and freely usable - in fact I think the only sensible business model for standards development is to give them away free and charge some money for compliance testing. What ISO and many other bodies do is completely wrong, and hence fails most of the time (there are far more ISO standards than are actually used, because people cannot even examine them for fitness without paying for them. Hence a vast amount of talking, time off and air miles are wasted on producing documents that never see the light of day). Thomas continues Just to continue on my software ecosystem comment a few posts back, I think this conference would be an opportunity to show more than just why open source is good in a general sense. We already have the proof that this is true in some areas, with category-topping efforts like Linux Apache. We also already have some great medical open source systems. What we don't have is a standard-based, interoperable ecosystem of software that we can offer the industry as a whole. What I think we want is to show that we can build a cathedral, but do it in the bazaar. We need something that looks like objectweb.org http://objectweb.org/, but in health. Putting openly developed standards together with openly developed software is the key to the future in my view, and we should be developing the necessary thinking now; the conference is an ideal opportunity to aim for exposing
Re: [openhealth] Re: [Fwd: [FOSS-PDI] OSHCA Conference - Preliminary Announcement]
--- Molly Cheah [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Open Source is also a open standard of software development! We need to define/re-define these open standards, remove the obsolete and invoke those of the future. As for objective 4, we need to discuss this now rather than wait. Think big and start small is perhaps the way to go? Nandalal Thanks for the suggestion, Stephen. I have added as suggested but include the word open to standards as in Objective 4. These objectives and tentative programme is in our web-portal. The programme is tentative and to be discussed at the Openhealth list as well. I will post this discussion to the Openhealth list to see if the FOSS community wish to add further to this. The Conference programme can be found here: http://oshca.org/conference/conf2007/conf2007prog Conference Objectives: 1. Share and review current FOSS applications in healthcare 2. Share and review current technologies in healthcare software 3. Conceptualise and define OSHCA's role in managing FOSS collaborative services 4. Explore the role of open standards in facilitating interoperable health information communication 5. Promote OSHCA and its activities particularly to IT and healthcare communities in ASEAN/Asia-Pacific region 6. Promote the advantages of using FOSS applications to managers of healthcare facilities in public and private sectors in the ASEAN/Asia-Pacific region. For the information of the FOSS community, APAMI stands for Asia-Pacific Association for Medical Informatics, which is an affiliate of IMIA. I believe Peter Murray is at the Openhealth list and would be happy to get his views on the OSHCA conference. Perhaps I should add here that Objective 3 is important to OSHCA in preparation and anticipation of the IDRC's Pan Asia eHealth Research Network Programme 2006-2011. OSI's information programme has special interests for funding FOSS projects around open standards. Rgds, Molly Stephen Chu wrote: Hi, Molly: If interoperability is one of the focus of the conference, I suggest that you add one more item to the existing conference objectivies: Explore the role of standards in facilitating interoperable health information communication. We can certainly discuss how national and international standards and information infrastructure building play a role in interoperable health information communication. Regards, Stephen On 1/17/07, *Molly Cheah* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Klaus, I spoke to HM just now and I think in principle there shouldn't be a problem co-organising with APAMI. We have already obtained some support from UNDP-APDIP's IOSN programme (with the help of Alvin Marcelo) It would be great to also get support from HL7 Australia and NZ, since our focus is on interoperability and data exchange. No doubt our target applications are FOSS applications and as such presentations of applications and technology used will be restricted to FOSS. If May 8-11 (tuesday to friday) is acceptable, we'll work towards those dates, making available time for those attending HIMSS in Singapore, the opportunity to take off for a 3-day exclusive getaway in bungalows by the sea in Pulau Langkawi or anywhere else, before going down south to S'pore. This is VMY2007 :). Would May 8-12 (Wednesday to Saturday) a better alternative? I'm copying this e-mail discussion on the dates to the OSHCA committee to avoid me having to repeat the views expressed. Rgds, Molly Klaus Veil wrote: Molly, I think an association with APAMI would be very beneficial to OSHCA 2007 and the FOSS approach in general. We could also explore if HL7 Australia and HL7 NZ would be able to provide some backing... Klaus -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Molly Cheah Sent: Wednesday, 17 January 2007 14:52 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Fwd: [FOSS-PDI] OSHCA Conference - Preliminary Announcement] Dear Stephen, Thank you for your assistance to promote this event. I'm hoping that APAMI may come in as co-organisers. Can't seem to get hold of HM Goh to discuss this. Klaus suggested that the date be moved to May 8-11 to avoid clashing with some of the other HL7 meetings, as well as convience for those attending the HIMSS Asia-Pacific event on 15-17 in Singapore. I don't think
