I thought that it’s expected of the applications to be commercial or commercial ready. Doesn't IHE expect the vendor that subscribes to the Connectathon to be serious about taking the tested application to the market as product? Won't it violate the spirit of the Connectathon if I'll hack up some panels that trigger the underlying actors without it look remotely like something a physician will ever consider using? Actually it will be much simpler to run them from the command line :-)
Coming from IBM research we have some serious problems sponsoring this huge code investment, and vendor integration+education. To most of the vendors we serve as a major IHE support, explaining how to do the MESA tests, and how to "think IHE Secured Node" etc. Note that we are implementing seven actors and supporting dozen vendors, we expect the number of vendors using OHF to more then double by next year.
This year IBM supported the open source openEMR application participation fees. We will probably not be able to do it next year. I know of open source applications that wish to go to the '08 Connectathon (openEMR, Mirth, Tolven, MirrorMed, and more are coming). They have lots of motivation that comes with considerable barriers in the shape of travel expenses plus the investment in integration, implementation, and passing the MESA tests. From talks with them I understand that the 8K$ registration fees is something they will not be able to swallow, and I assume that it will prevent them from participating in the event.
I see it as a big miss to IHE since these end user applications have real users in the market. Each of them have a unique characteristic that can display more innovative ways of integrating IHE in the market. For example the Tolven's PDA PHR application with its personal medical devices integration, and Mirth's healthcare messaging integration server.
