Appendices

7. Focus of effort over the next 5 years

Participants discussed at length where groups such as the IMIAOpen Source Working Group, OSHCA, and other advocacy groups, 
should focus their efforts over the next 5 years, particularly if they are to succeed in furthering the development and uptake of FLOSS in 
healthcare. A wide range of options was generated and discussed, and a number of braod categories emerged, being:

• 'political' activity; including working within existing health informatics and other organisations and persuading them to support and commit to FLOSS approaches, rather than setting up new organisations; working in local health communities; making available documents and speaking on the benefits of FLOSS; further Open Steps type meetings, possibly at European level and including more industry players;

• money issues; including a need for well-written business cases for FLOSS, and for publication and dissemination of material on economics and total cost of ownership issues around FLOSS and proprietary software;

• availability; as above, the importance of health data being available across time and all kinds of boundaries between systems;

• standards; including interoperability issues; and

• philosophy; including promoting the philosophies and benefits of FLOSS software and approache

Participants voted for their preferred options to focus effort as (in rank order):

1. Politics				56%
2. Money				4%
3. Availability				30%
4. Standards				0%
5. Philosophy				9%

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

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