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How should the IMIA OSWG move forward over the next 2-5 years

While not all participants were members of the IMIA OSWG, and a number of other organisations were also represented at the meeting, as the meeting was held primarily under the auspices of the IMIA OSWG and the IMIA-NI OSNI WG, participants were asked their views on some of the key focus areas that form the objectives of the IMIA OSWG.

After briefly describing the IMIA OSWG, Dr Jan Vejvalka, its chair, presented for discussion and voting a number of the propsoed benefits of FLOSS that underly the group's objectives. Participants were asked both their own views and what they thought would be the views of the target/user population in relation to the objectives (see appendix 8).

The results are perhaps not surprising; the participants agreed to varying degrees with the benefits statements, but felt that the general population did not perceive the advantages of FLOSS. The benefits with which the participants agreed most strongly were advantages of FLOSS approaches over proprietary software development in healthcare applications, and which the IMIA OSWG and other groups may wish to consider focusing their energies on were:

• transparency of solutions, facilitating peer review and better quality assurance;

• reuse of components, stress on collaborative development, and resource sharing ; and

• encouraging accessibility to products in developing countries.

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Appendices>>>

Status of this report >>>

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

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