Open Steps
|
Open Steps,
release 1.0
Report of a
thinktank meeting on Free/Libre/Open Source Software in the health and
health informatics domains
Marwell, February
2004
|
Executive
Summary
The Open
Steps thinktank of
February 2004, held at the Marwell Hotel, Winchester , UK was the first
in a series of meetings planned by the Open Source Working Group of the
International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA OSWG) and held in
conjunction with the British Computer Society Health Informatics
Committee and other groups. Most participants were from the UK, although
others were from The Netherlands, Czech Republic, Belgium and North
America.
The main purpose of
the meeting was
to identify key
issues, opportunities, obstacles, areas of work and research that may be
needed, and other relevant aspects, around the potential for using open
source software, solutions and approaches within health care, and in
particular within health informatics, in the UK and Europe.
Three quarters of
attendees described their 'ideal vision for the future use of software
in healthcare' as containing at least a significant percentage of
Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) [1] , with nearly one third
wanting to see it 'entirely open source'.
The emergence of a
situation wherein FLOSS could interface with proprietary software within
the healthcare domain was seen to be achievable and desirable, and also
likely if the right drivers were put in place and barriers addressed.
Participants felt that the strongest drivers were:
- adoption and use of the right
standards;
- the development of a FLOSS 'killer
application';
- a political mandate towards the
use of FLOSS; and
- producing positive case studies
comparing financial benefits of FLOSS budget reductions.
Participants rated
the most important issues why people do and might use FLOSS within the
health domain as quality, stability and robustness of software and data,
as well as long-term availability of important health data through not
being locked up in proprietary systems that do not allow
interoperability and data migration. They felt that the two most
important areas for FLOSS activity by IMIA OSWG and other FLOSS groups
were 'political' activity and work on raising awareness among healthcare
workers and the wider public.
The Marwell Open
Steps meeting was organised and supported by the following
organisations:
- IMIA
Open Source Working Group (IMIA OSWG)
- British
Computer Society Health Informatics Committee (BCS HIC)
- IMIA
Special Interest Group on Nursing Informatics, Open Source Nursing
Informatics Working Group (IMIA-NI OSNI)
- Open
Source Health Care Alliance (OSHCA)
- Peak
Performance (for use of Interactive Presenter digital voting
system).
Contents>>>
Appendices>>>
Status
of this report >>>
Technical aspects, copyright and licensing;
GNU Free Documentation License >>>
Copyright
(c) 2004 IMIA Open Source Working Group and British Computer Society
Health Informatics Committee
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and
no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
|
For general
enquiries about the Open Steps meeting, email:
Dr Peter Murray - peter.murray@chirad.info
|
Site
development by: Peter Murray
Last updated 29 April, 2004
|
|
The International Medical Informatics
Association (IMIA) - www.imia.org
|
Design checked in: Mozilla 1.3.1, Opera
6.03, and other browsers
Page maintained with: OpenOffice.org 1.1
|