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Participant background and attitudes to FLOSS

Participants in the Marwell Open Steps meeting comprised a select, invited number of individuals; the intention was that the meeting should provide a think-tank atmosphere, and should be small enough that participants would not feel intimidated about speaking, while at the same time having enough people present to promote meaningful discussion, diversity of opinion and a consensus on issues that might have some value. However, not all participants were invited on the basis of being known enthusiasts for FLOSS. The meeting was aimed primarily at people who the organisers thought would have sufficient knowledge of both health care systems and IT use within those systems to be able to provide an informed opinion on the issues. While many are actively involved in using, developing and/or promoting FLOSS, some had more sceptical views, or have yet to be convinced of any substantial benefit from the use of FLOSS. This diversity is reflected in some of the consensus views obtained through voting, and in the discussions, both of which are reported later.

Of the 28 people attending, most (20) were from the UK; other attendees were from The Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Canada and the USA. About 30% of participants worked in or for the NHS directly.

In reply to the question 'how would you describe your primary interest in open source for healthcare', about 25% cited each of the three areas main areas, ie, clinical, management/policy and academic (figure 1). Almost half of the participants (46%) had a role in making decisions in their organisation on the choice of IT health solutions, while over half (57%) felt they had a role in influencing outside their organisations; 15% said their role included both.

(figure 2)

While over 50% of the participants were everyday users of some form of FLOSS, 31% had not (knowingly) used FLOSS. In addition, while 31% of participants had used FLOSS healthcare applications, other (office/productivity) applications, and operating systems, another 35% had only used the latter two categories (figure 2). However, almost three quarters of participants felt it was important that at least some healthcare software should be open source (although 20% were undecided).

Almost one third (31%) described their ' ideal vision for the future use of software in healthcare' as 'entirely open source', with another 42% saying that FLOSS should be a 'significant percentage'. When asked, in light of developments in the UK towards the implementation of the NHS Care Records System, 'what is your view on the potential application of a universal open source Electronic Health Record system?', 50% of participants felt it was desirable and achievable, although significantly almost one third (31%) said 'if we end up with a system that works, what does it matter?'

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Copyright (c) 2004 IMIA Open Source Working Group and British Computer Society Health Informatics Committee

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