Conmergence

OSHCA (Africa Chapter) Meeting; 17-20 June 2008; Elangeni Hotel, Durban, South Africa

On behalf of the OSHCA community and our funders, the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Health Organization, the Fogarty International Centre, National Institutes of Health, USA, and the South African Medical Research Council we invite you to attend the first meeting of the OSHCA Africa Chapter from 17-20 June 2008 at the Elangeni Hotel, Durban, South Africa.

The Meeting will be held in association with the biannual Health Informatics in South Africa Conference (www.hisa.co.za) and the OpenMRS Implementers Meeting (www.openmrs.org). Prospective attendees should complete the registration form on the HISA web site (http://hisa.airwave.co.za/?display=registration&heading=Registration). Please enter the word `OSHCA’ in the space reserved for the SAHIA Membership Number.

A satellite meeting devoted to open source mobile (PDA, Cell phone) health application development and mobile health data collection, hosted by the OpenROSA consortium, will be held on Monday 16 June 2008 at the same venue.  A limited number of places are available and prospective attendees should contact the organizer, Dr Chris Seebregts (chris.seebregts@mrc.ac.za) or the meeting administrator, Anthea van Blerk (anthea.van.blerk@mrc.ac.za), directly, providing details of the applicant, organization, contact details and reason for wanting to attend.

The Full Programme for both events is still being finalized.  However, an interim version is available on the conference web site and updates are published from time to time.  If you would like to submit a presentation, please contact the organizer, Dr Chris Seebregts (chris.seebregts@mrc.ac.za). The meeting will have significant technical content including a developer codefest and interoperability workshop that will include other open source health software.

Who should attend
Developers of health data collection applications
Mangers of health facilities with a requirement for data collection
Open source developers

A limited amount of funding is available to assist with the travel and accommodation costs of existing or prospective open source health software developers and implementers from Africa or other developing countries who do not have institutional funding. Please send details of the applicant, organization, contact details and a motivation for why you want to attend this meeting including details of any existing or planned OpenMRS Implementation and e-mail to Anthea van Blerk (anthea.van.blerk@mrc.ac.za).

Contact details
Anthea van Blerk
E-mail: anthea.van.blerk@mrc.ac.za
Tel: 27 21 938 0851

Dr Chris Seebregts
E-mail : chris.seebregts@mrc.ac.za
Tel: 27 21 938 0318 (w);
+27 82 461 5556 (m);
chrisseebregts (skype)
Postal: Box 19070, Tygerberg 7505, South Africa

Biomedical Informatics Research Division,
e-Health Research and Innovation Platform,
Medical Research Council,
Cape Town, South Africa
University of KwaZulu-Natal
South Africa

Open Source and Drupal Camp Shanghai May, 17th 2008

What is Open Source Camp Shanghai?

Open Source Camp is an invitation-based and unconference event that brings together open source developer, geek, entrepreneurs, academics, venture capitalists, technology influencer and Media for an intense user-created conference about open source, emerging technology topics. It's organized by the community, for the community. The event combines, sharing, learning, networking, and fun. Participants, who are experts and innovators in their fields, are also the presenters. We suggest you to join as an individual to share your ideas here, communicate with each other. The goal is to boost tech community and innovation around the world.

What's DruaplCamp Shanghai?

Drupal Camp Shanghai is a volunteer-organized, peer taught, multi-track conference focused on the Drupal open source content management system. The event will bring experts and rookies alike from all facets of web communications including developers, information architects, designers and themers, as well as entrepreneurs, marketers, non-profit groups, and other users of Drupal.

Why are we doing a joint event?

To simply put it! Save time and energy. OSCamp is a format to let community meetup, it's the community of community , which is composed of technology evangelists who are also active in the open source community, Well, drupal is build on the concept that form open source software development it was more than logical to combined the two event and bring the two communities together. We hope this will be a foundation piece for many more open source collaboration between the various technologies and communities.

Day 1: OpenSource Camp Event 5.17 13:00 -- 19:00
Day 2: Druapl Camp Event 5.18 10:00 -- 18:00

How to Register?

If you want to attend OSCamp event just send an email to opensourcecamp@gmail.com

This mail should contain:

• Your name
• Your email address
• Your website or blog (if you have any)
• Your interesting 3 tags (e.g. open source , climbing, networking)
• Your Recommended People
• Session(s) you'd like to lead
• If you want to give a presentation at 8 minutes project show, please metioned in your email.

If you want to attend DrupalCamp, please register here
http://www.drupalcampshanghai.org/en/user/register

50 RMB per person (Includes cost share on venue, a t-shirt, in order to encouage more girls to join open source, oscamp will give a special girl-edition t-shirt to open source girls,:) )

Venue: River South Creative Park
Address: 1247 Nan Suzhou Road (Suzhou Road South)

Map: http://drupalcampshanghai.org/sites/drupalcampshanghai.org/files/address_large_apr21.jpg

DRUID Fundamental on Open and Proprietary Innovation Regimes Call for Participation and Paper Submissions

CALL for participation and paper-submissions (Apologies for cross postings) DIME - DRUID Fundamental on Open and Proprietary Innovation Regimes: Opportunities and limitations of the open source models of innovation and the role of intellectual property rights June 17, 2008, Copenhagen, DK See the full call at the Fundamental web site: http://www.dime-eu.org/wp14/conferences/ipross

The Fundamental is held in conjunction with the DRUID celebration conference: http://www.druid.dk/celebration2008

Confirmed speakers:

• Ashish Arora (Carnegie Mellon University)
• Carliss Baldwin (Harvard Business School)
• James Bessen (Boston University and Research on Innovation)
• Jean-Michel Dalle (University Pierre-et-Marie-Curie)
• Paul David (Stanford University and Oxford Internet Institute)
• Alfonso Gambardella (Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi)
• Rishab Ghosh (MERIT)
• Bronwyn Hall (University of California, Berkeley)
• Dietmar Harhoff (University of Munich)
• Joachim Henkel (Munich University of Technology)
• Georg von Krogh (ETH Zürich)
• Sonali Shah (University of Washington)

The Fundamental is open at no additional costs for DRUID conference participants. There is no fee for those wishing to participate in the Fundamental alone. Registration of such can take place by emailing ipr_oss.ino@cbs.dk.

Participants who have registered for the Fundamental are invited to submit papers sending an email to ipr_oss.ino@cbs.dk before the EXTENDED DEADLINE May 1th, 2008, so that they can be made available to everyone registered for the Fundamental. Only original and not already published papers at a reasonable standard will be accepted. The papers will be published in the DIME IPR working paper series and hosted on the Fundamental web site. If the quality and the number of the submitted papers allow, the best papers will also receive the opportunity to be presented at a poster session which will run during the day.

Papers submitted after this deadline and before June 17th can be submitted to the DIME working paper series on IPRs: http://www.dime-eu.org/working-papers/wp14 by emailing to ipr_oss.ino@cbs.dk

Organizers:

Birgitte Andersen. Reader in the Economics and Management of Innovation at the University of London, Birkbeck College, and Visiting Professor at the British Institute of Technology and Ecommerce (BITE).  http://www.bbk.ac.uk/manop/management/staff/andersen.shtml

Lee Davis. Associate Professor, Department of Innovation and Organizational Economics, and Research Fellow, Centre on Law, Economics and Financial Institutions, both at the Copenhagen Business School, and a member of both DIME and DRUID. http://www.cbs.dk/staff/lee

Francesco Rullani. Assistant Professor at the Department of Innovation and Organizational Economics, Copenhagen Business School. https://mail.sssup.it/~rullani/

Dirk Riehle on the Total Growth of Open Source

Hello everyone, we recently measured the growth of much of the active code base of open source as well as number of active projects and could best explain it using an exponential model. We have found these results, as straightforward as they may be, quite helpful when making our case for funding further open source research, and I thought, so might you. I have appended the reference to the paper.

Authors: Amit Deshpande, Dirk Riehle

Abstract: Software development is undergoing a major change away from a fully closed software process towards a process that incorporates open source software in products and services. Just how significant is that change? To answer this question we need to look at the overall growth of open source as well as its growth rate. In this paper, we quantitatively analyze the growth of more than 5000 active and popular open source software projects. We show that the total amount of source code as well as the total number of open source projects is growing at an exponential rate. Previous research showed linear and quadratic growth in lines of source code of individual open source projects. Our work shows that open source is expanding into new domains and applications at an exponential rate.

Reference: In Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Open Source Systems (OSS 2008). Springer Verlag, 2008, to appear. http://www.riehle.org/publications/2008/the-total-growth-of-open-source/

Eclipse Open Source Software and OMG Open Specifications Symposium, Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Hosted by:

               

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Eclipse and OMG have jointly organized a one-day symposium to promote and build on the partnership between Eclipse's open source software and OMG's open specifications. The symposium is organized as a series of presentation sessions and discussions on corresponding OMG specifications and Eclipse projects. In each case the purpose will be to discuss the alignment between current specification and implemented software, and identify areas where the cooperation could be further improved in the future.

This symposium is a unique opportunity to participate in shaping the joint future of the Eclipse Open Source community and the OMG Open Specifications community. Please join us for a day of stimulating technical planning and discussion.

AGENDA
09:00-09:45	Introduction & Symposium Overview Kenn Hussey, Program Manager, EA/Studio, Embarcadero Technologies, Inc. Co-chair, Eclipse/OMG Symposia Program Committee
09:45-10:45	Session 1: MetaObject Facility (MOF) Presentations by: Hajo Eichler, Senior Architect, ikv++ technologies ag Pete Rivett, CTO, Adaptive Discussion
10:45-11:00	Morning Refreshments
11:00-12:00	Session 2: UML & Profiles Presentations by: James Bruck, Software Developer, IBM Dave Carlson, Architect, David Carlson & Associates, Inc. Discussion
12:00-14:00	Lunch & OMG Plenary Presentations
14:00-15:00	Session 3: Queries/Views/Transformations (QVT) Presentations by: Victor Roldan Betancort, Researcher, Open Canarias S.L. Eduardo Victor Sánchez Rebull, Telecommunications Engineer, Open Canarias S.L. Discussion
15:00-15:30	Session 4: Object Constraint Language (OCL) Presentation by: Christian W. Damus, Software Developer, IBM Discussion
15:30-15:45	Afternoon Refreshments
15:45-16:45	Session 5: Ontology Definition Metamodel (ODM) Presentations by: Elisa Kendall, CEO, Sandpiper Software Francisco Jose Marquina Muñoz, Software Engineer, Push the Button Discussion
16:45-17:00	Wrap-up / Next Steps Ed Merks, Senior Technical Staff Member, IBM Toronto Software Lab Eclipse Modeling Project Lead

OASIS Members Demonstrate Interoperability of XACML Access Control Standard in HITSP Health Care Scenario

San Francisco, CA, USA; 7 April 2008 — At the RSA Conference today, members of the OASIS open standards consortium, in cooperation with the Health Information Technologies Standards Panel (HITSP), demonstrated interoperability of the eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) version 2.0. Simulating a real world scenario provided by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the demo showed how XACML ensures successful authorization decision requests and the exchange of authorization policies.

"XACML is widely regarded as the standard for solving complex access control problems in the enterprise," noted James Bryce Clark, director of standards development at OASIS. "Today's demo shows that XACML can play a key role in health care. By successfully enforcing fine-grained access control decisions to protected health information, XACML meets HITSP's requirements for security and privacy."

"We're pleased to work with OASIS on addressing the very sensitive issues related to the access of patient information," said John (Mike) Davis, standards architect with the VHA Office of Information in the Department of Veterans Affairs, and a member of the HITSP Security, Privacy and Infrastructure Technical Committee. "XACML helps ensure that patients, physicians, hospitals, public health agencies and other authorized users share critical information appropriately and securely."

Intalio|On Demand Launched, First Ever Open Source BPM Suite as Service

<ed.note>Ismael Chang Ghalimi, CEO, passed this PR piece to me:</ed.note>

Lowers Barriers to Adoption for BPM Projects

PALO ALTO, Calif. — April 1, 2008 — Intalio, Inc., the leading Open Source BPMS company, today announced Intalio|On Demand, the first open source Business Process Management System delivered as a service. Intalio|On Demand is available by signing up at www.intalio.com/on-demand. The subscription for the service starts at $1,500 for each dedicated server, and includes bandwidth, licenses, maintenance, and support. Users can receive a free 5-day evaluation.

The convenience of being able to instantly deploy a BPM project lowers the bar for adoption. Business users and IT analysts can get a project up and running much quicker and without the administrative concerns associated with managing the required servers. Intalio|On Demand essentially replicates the Intalio|BPMS On Premise version and includes the connectors for Salesforce.com as well as enterprise applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite and SAP.

"Intalio|On Demand BPM is a fully functional, scalable, secure, and flexible enterprise ready BPM solution which will revolutionize BPM adaptability across not only large but also small and medium business spectrum," stated Srikanth Kollu, global practice head–BPM/SOA at JASS & Associates Inc. “After building some prototypes with Intalio|On Demand I was convinced that this approach was the best. We have decided to go with Intalio.” JASS & Associates develops and implements end-to-end IT solutions for clients, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups, from diverse industry segments.

Running dedicated servers on top of Amazon Web Services (AWS) ensures that Intalio|On Demand retains the highest level of security, reliability and availability possible. "The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud is a perfect fit for porting on-premise software to a ‘software as a service’ model", says Senior Amazon Web Services Evangelist, Jeff Barr. "Amazon EC2 allows companies like Intalio to develop new distribution channels with minimal expenditure."

Using rPath as the software appliance on top of AWS increases application scalability to ensure that there is always capacity for whatever user demand is generated. Intalio|BPMS, in both On Demand and On Premise versions, supports over 100,000 different process models deployed on a single server, with over 100 million process instances running concurrently. A single server can also accommodate thousands of concurrent users. This means that Intalio|BPMS has more than two orders of magnitude greater capacity than any other BPM solution available today.

According to Forrester analyst Ray Wang in the August 2007 report titled Competition Intensifies For The SMB ERP Customer, “SaaS deployment options finally put business users in the driver's seat in software decision-making. With rapid deployment of a solution, enterprises can realize benefits in days, not weeks. Additionally, software pricing by cost/user/month enables business users to consider licenses as an operation expense instead of a capital expense. No longer do business users have to seek board approval for capital expenses or assess IT capacity. However, Forrester recommends that business units and IT teams coordinate on issues such as integration requirements, process flows, and long-term support.”*

For more information on Intalio, please visit www.intalio.com or subscribe to the RSS feed at http://www.intalio.com/blog.

Recent News

Intalio Announces Support for BPMN 1.1
http://www.intalio.com/news/intalio-announces-support-for-bpmn-11/

Informatica Signs OEM Agreement with Intalio;
http://www.intalio.com/news/informatica-signs-oem-agreement-with-intalio/

Intalio and Alfresco Integrate BPM Suite with Enterprise Content Management; http://www.intalio.com/news/intalio-and-alfresco-integrate-bpm-suite-with-enterprise-content-management/

Intalio Launches Worldwide Partner Program; http://www.intalio.com/news/intalio-launches-worldwide-partner-program/

About Intalio, Inc.

Intalio is the leading vendor of Open Source BPM and SOA software. The Intalio Business Process Platform™ empowers organizations of all sizes to develop process-driven applications faster, better, and cheaper. Founded in July 1999, Intalio is a privately-held, venture-backed company located in Palo Alto, California. For more information on Intalio, please call 650-596-1800 or visit www.intalio.com.

The Intalio Business Process Platform is a trademark of Intalio, Inc. All other names, brands or products may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Open Source in European Health Care European Federation for Medical Informatics Special Topic Conference, September 9-11, 2008

Organized by the IMIA and EFMI Open Source Working Groups and taking place at the BCS Meeting Rooms Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA, UK, the conference will explore the current and future issues related to open source in healthcare. In particular, there will be a focus on health records, ubiquitous computing, knowledge sharing, and current and future applications. The Conference will consist of invited plenary speakers and workshops, and is designed to actively engage the delegates. More here.

JC Lacal on the Open Source Consulting Model and Rationale

<ed.note>JC sends out an occasional newsletter, [Seamless Health], and in today's edition he included a brief explanation of his company's open source model which I thought was worth posting:</ed.note>

In the software industry there are two main types of business models: a.) The Adobe / Microsoft / Oracle model where users can not make changes to the software and they pay steep per-user licensing fees; and b.) The Free / Open Source Software (F/OSS) model where users can make any changes they need to the software and with no licensing fees. The Apache web server, the GNU/Linux operating system, the MySQL database engine, sendmail, and the PHP programming language are but a few examples of the high-quality Free Software available at no cost.

OpenPHI is based on the Free Software model: anybody can use our software for free as it is. We make money by adapting our software to fit your specific needs. This is not as radical as it sounds. Think of Free Software companies as a law practice. Almost all legal proceedings, documents, and pleadings are a matter of public record. Thusly, anybody can go to the courthouse and get a verbatim copy of a will, divorce petition, or lawsuit filing prepared by an expensive law firm. And yet, with all these legal documents available for free, most law firms still have a good business preparing _customized_ legal documents for paying customers.

OpenPHI operates on the premise that by providing our base software at no cost (think of "free eggs"), potential clients will get to value OpenPHI's capabilities and expertise. Thereby increasing the value of the "hen" (the OpenPHI's staffers) that laid the "free eggs."

WorldVistA is a finalist in the Stockholm Challenge

Ignacio Valdes writes:

The over all goal of the Stockholm Challenge is to help counteract social and economic disadvantage, wherever it occurs, by promoting the use of ICT for development. It is mostly targeted towards developing
regions and community or social sectors such as gender equality and minorities with the greatest needs. The award invites projects in six different categories:

   * Public Administration
   * Education
   * Economic Development
   * Culture
   * Health
   * Environment

WorldVistA's entry: http://event.stockholmchallenge.se/project/2008/Health/WorldVistA

This Day in Open

The US Navy announces decision to acquire only systems based on open technologies and standards, Midland Memorial Hospital is recognized as one of 9 US Hospitals to achieve Stage 6 adoption of Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model running open source, AOL Opens Messenger for Open Source, IBM to produce Open Referent PCs in response to customer requests for an open-source PC and Microsoft eyes Eclipse.

Jose Lacal on OpenPHI, Consumer-controlled Personal Health Records and the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organization's National Patient Safety Goal 8 for 2008

here.

NOSI's Survey of FOSS use in the nonprofit sector

Michelle Murrain posts:

We've finalized the report on the survey we did early last month. There are some interesting results, and it is worth a read. The summary:

Our sampling wasn't sufficient to allow us to draw firm conclusions about software choices in the nonprofit sector as a whole, but our responses did come from a broad range of organizations. These groups are diverse both in size, mission and their use of free and open source software, and it is clear from their responses that FOSS is actively used in the nonprofit sector. FOSS is common on web servers, and while FOSS desktop operating systems are still uncommon, many nonprofits use free and open source applications on proprietary desktop operating systems. Many people in the sector use FOSS everyday, or at least quite frequently. Nonprofits do have a clear understanding of the strengths of FOSS, and at least some organizations have made organizational commitments to open source and open standards.

Read it here.

Open Mobile Group Launched on LinkedIn.com

Invite link here. For those interested in Open Mobile solutions (open source, open standards) and convergence.

OpenVanilla

OpenVanilla is an input method project. An input method is a system software program that people use to enter characters not found on their keyboards. The Project includes a large collection of Traditional and Simplified Chinese input methods as well as support for Taiwanese, Japanese, Tibetan, Unicode symbols, among others.

Input method development used to be platform-dependent. OpenVanilla provides a lightweight API that simplifies the process. Because of its minimalistic design, OpenVanilla is highly portable. Input method modules developed with OpenVanilla's API run smoothly on Mac OS X, Linux/FreeBSD, and Windows.

The Project also explores the possibilities of input method design. Topics include better user interface design and use cases beyond Asian languages. It's an open source project, participation welcome!

HISA/OpenMRS/OSHCA 2008 Conference 16-20 June 2008, Durban, South Africa

The South African Health Informatics Association (SAHIA), OpenMRS Consortium (OpenMRS) and OpenSource Healthcare Alliance are pleased to announce the 2008 Conference of the Open Source Healthcare Alliance (OSHCA) and augural meeting of the Africa chapter of OSHCA that will take place during the week of 16 to 20 June 2008 in Durban, South Africa in association with HISA 2008, the biannual meeting of the South African Health Informatics Association (SAHIA) and the OpenMRS Implementers Meeting 2008. Specific dates and the program are presently being developed and will be announced on the conference and OpenMRS web site as they become available.  We are planning a stimulating program for developers, implementers and users of open source health software and hope that those who supported previous events will consider supporting this event. We look forward to seeing you in Durban!

Kind Regards
Chris Seebregts, PhD
Biomedical Informatics Research
Medical Research Council
University of KwaZulu-Natal
South Africa
Voice: +27 21 938 0318 (w); +27 82 461 5556 (m); chrisseebregts (skype)
Postal: Box 19070, Tygerberg 7505, South Africa

Tim Cook on Upcoming EGADSS Concall Friday 18 January, 2008

I am cross posting this to the openhealth and OSHCA mailing lists though it originated on the AMIA OSWG list. 

There is a conference call scheduled for 0500GMT Friday 18 January, 2008 between the current holders of the EVIDENCE-BASED GUIDELINES AND DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM (EGADSS) project (http://www.egadss.org) and an interested open source EMR project that is active and long standing.  I am just a facilitator.

On short notice, I would like to know how many of the members of these mailing lists are interested in contributing (writing code/documentation/MLM's) for a project like EGADSS?  This information
may help in the context of the conference call.   

I personally would like to see EGADSS revived.  I had to leave the project early on for personal reasons and after I left there were no other open source promoters to build a community. 

A member of the AMIA OS-WG posted the below (very legitimate) comments about EGADSS.  I will address them inline.

> EGADSS seems like a good idea but it's hard to say how well the project is going.
> I have followed the project for the last few years and here are some things I see.
> (1) They don't have a work demo on their site.

There was a demo running on a server in the offices but once funding stopped it was taken down.

> (2) Their website hasn't changed in 2 years (at all).

Again, no open source advocate, no continuation of those things.

> (3) I've never seen a working demo

I wish you had seen it.

> (4) There has been no tracker activity for 3 years.

Yep, no advocate, no activity.  They didn't "get" open source.

> (5) The status of the project is alpha (meaning, not really close to
> ready for prime time).
>

Actually I think this is a bad label applied by people that didn't want to be bothered.  It really does work.  It should have been in at least a beat state to encourage others to use it. 

> I've always wanted EGADSS to succeed, but the pace is very slow.
> I can't say I'd invest a lot of time building a CDS on an alpha
> release of a slow project.

I really hope that I can reason with the current holders of the IP (I hate that acronym but don't have a better one) on this call and show them that this can be much more than just a government funded academic exercise.  My understanding is that it is being used in a computer science course but obviously none of that work ever gets rolled back into the project. 

It will be great to see some emails of support from this community so I will have better information for the conference call.

Cheers,
Tim

Proceedings: Ontolog Panel Discussion - Semantic Interoperability in Health Informatics: Lessons Learned

Peter Yim writes:

We had, on Thursday 10-January-2008, another one of our best attended panel sessions.

Mr. Marc Wine (co-chair), Mr. Rex Brooks (co-chair), Dr. Michael Cummens and Professor Saul Rosenberg were on the panel to join the community in a discussion around the topic "Semantic Interoperability in Health Informatics, Lessons Learned." Sharing their insights and experience, the panelists called upon the government, industry and the ontology community to collaborate toward better healthcare through better health informatics through improved semantic interoperability.

Thank you very much, Marc and Rex, for organizing the session, and to Mike and Saul as well for sharing your insights with the rest of the community. The wonderful turnout today (and more importantly, who it was that came) really, as Rex put it, "underscored the extent to which the topic resonates and reflected the fact that [the session was] addressing a very key concern that the industry is facing and is looking for guidance and solution. Appreciations, as always, go to those who joined us at the event in real time; and for their contributions to the rich discussion we had during the last segment of the session.

Proceedings of the session are captured on our wiki page, at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2008_01_10

In particular, full audio recording of the session (as well as the podcast of it) is now on our archives and is available - see: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2008_01_10#nid16RV

Thank you again, Mr. Wine, Mr. Brooks, Dr. Cummens and Professor Rosenberg!

Best regards. =ppy

P.S.  Watch our [ontolog-invitation] list for further announcements of Ontolog events that may be of interest, or browse the listing under the "News & Announcements" section at our Ontolog WikiHomePage (at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nidW ) for our upcoming events.

The archives of noteworthy past Ontolog events can be found at:
http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nidZ

Tx. =ppy

DOD’s open challenge

By Peter A. Buxbaum, Special to GCN

Programs take advantage of open technologies, but department needs to develop policies on use

Please take the NOSI survey on the use of FOSS inthe nonprofit sector

Greetings!

The Nonprofit Open Source Initiative (NOSI) is very interested in the use of free and open source software in the nonprofit sector. We want to understand better how FOSS is used, what people's attitudes are towards it, and what resources are necessary for organizations to choose and use FOSS.

This is the first of an annual survey, so we can understand and track trends of the use of FOSS in the sector, and so we can strategize how best to meet the needs of the sector. We'll be releasing a report next month with the results of the survey.

It will take about 5-10 minutes to fill out. We'd very much appreciate your time! Please take it no matter what the level of use of open source software is in your organization - data on as wide a range of organizations will be helpful to us.

Please encourage your colleagues and clients to take this survey as well.

The survey is here.

Thanks again!

Peace,
Michelle Murrain
Coordinator, Nonprofit Open Source Initiative

A Giant Leap for Open Source Simulation

by Katherine Miller, biomedicalcomputationalreview.org

Researchers can now create musculoskeletal models and simulations on an open source platform. In August, Simbios researchers released OpenSim 1.0. This freely available software can, in about 20 minutes, create 3D simulations of human movement at a level of detail and accuracy that just a few years ago would have taken weeks or months.

Open GRID Group Launched on LinkedIn.com

This is a group to promote the intersection of open source, open standards and grid and high performance computing. The invite link is here.

Research Room @ FOSDEM: Libre Software Communities Meet Research Community Call for Participation

Joint workshop sponsored by the FLOSSMETRICS, QUALOSS, SQO-OSS, MANCOOSI and FLOSSMole research projects

The workshop will take place in the Research Room in FOSDEM 2008, to be held on Brussels next February 23rd and 24th 2008.

Many research projects (among them those sponsoring this workshop) are running under the scope of the Framework Programme of the European Commission. Those projects need to study different data sources belonging to libre software projects. For instance, a Subversion repository is a valuable source of information for research. However, its main purpose is not research, but source code version control, etc. This issue generates an impact on the project when the repository is used for research purposes (think for instance of the bandwidth used). In order to minimize the impact of the research activities in the life and resources of the libre software communities, we proudly announce the launching of the Research Friendly initiative. This initiative intends to be a meeting point among developers and researchers. With more detail, Research Friendly will provide:

Meeting point for surveys. When a researcher wants to make a survey to developers, that survey will be made available in ResearchFriendly.org. Once a year we will launch a call for surveys, intended for developers to reply to the surveys.

Repositories of the different projects. ResearchFriendly.org will mirror the different repositories, so all those data sources are available for researchers without requiring any extra resource from the libre software community.

Results will be fed back to the communities collaborating in the initiative. FOSDEM, probably the largest meeting point for libre software developers in Europe, provides an opportunity for this contact and exchange of ideas. The idea of the Research Room at FOSDEM is to explore the opportunities of this exchange, and what happens when developers and researchers are put together in the same (physical) space.

To frame and provide input to this ResearchFriendly initiative, we're asking for contributions both from researchers and developers, on the following topics (the list is not exhaustive), to be presented at the Resarch Room @ FOSDEM:

What developers feel could be useful from research on libre software

Feedback from the developer community to researchers

Experiences of developers and researchers working together

Results of applying research methodologies and analysis to libre software projects

Results (including expected results) of research projects studying libre software

What can the research community offer to libre software development

Methodologies and techniques that could be used to address specific problems in libre software development Although academic presentations are welcome, other, more informal (and maybe provocative) contributions are also encouraged. The main target is to have a good collection of ideas and experiences to foster discussion and interaction.

Those interested in contributing are invited to submit a short paper in PDF format, summarizing the intended contents of the presentation (probably two or three pages are enough, but no paper will be rejected for being too long). It should provide enough information to let the organizing committee decide on its appropriateness for the workshop, and the potential interest for participants.

Deadline for submissions: January 24th 2008

Notification of acceptance: January 31st 2008

Dates: February 23rd (afternoon -- workshop) and 24th (morning -- demos) 2008 Submissions should be sent to both addresses below, by the deadline:

Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona - jgb at gsyc.escet.urjc.es

Israel Herraiz - herraiz at gsyc.escet.urjc.es

Accepted papers will be published on-line, after letting authors provide more complete versions, if they want. Organizing committee (alphabetical order)]

Adriaan de Groot (KDE)

Jean-Christophe Deprez (CETIC, Belgium)

Roberto Di Cosmo (University of Paris VII, France)

Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)

Israel Herraiz (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)

Stefan Koch (Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria)

Sebastian Kugler (KDE)

Martin Michlmayr (HP, Austria)

Gregorio Robles (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)

Diomidis Spinellis (Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece)

Georgios Gousios (Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece)

Ioannis Stamelos (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece)

Megan Squire Conklin (Elon University, USA)

James Howison (Syracuse University, USA)

Greg Madey (University of Notre-Dame, USA)

Daniel M. German (University of Victoria, Canada)

Stephane Lauriere (Mandriva, France) Sponsoring projects

The Research Room at FOSDEM is sponsored by the following projects (although the meeting is completely open to anyone interested):

FLOSSMETRICS

QUALOSS

SQO-OSS

MANCOOSI

FLOSSMole

Most of these projects are funded in part by the European Commission, under the Information Society Technologies (IST) research programme of the Sixth Framework Program. A list of the IST projects in the area of Software Technologies is available from http://cordis.europa.eu/ist/st/projects.htm.

2007 InfoWorld Bossie (Best Open Source Software) Awards

here.

Military, New York State Have A Look-See at Open Stance

here and here.

Open VOIP group launched on LinkedIn.com

Invite link here.

Trishan de Lanerolle on The Humanitarian FOSS Project [H-FOSS]

Hello Everyone,

...Together with Prof. Ralph Morelli and other faculty from Trinity College, Wesleyan University and Connecticut College, we are working on a National Science Foundation funded project called “The Humanitarian FOSS Project” http://www.hfoss.org, where we are  trying to get students engaged in building H-FOSS, i..e., free and open source software that benefits the community. We believe that incorporating FOSS as a software development methodology is long overdue in undergraduate computing curricula. We think that students will respond positively to learning about FOSS and to contributing their new found knowledge and skills in projects that benefit the community. We hope to grow an academic community interested in getting undergraduate computing students to build H-FOSS. The grant enables us to explore whether engaging students in the Humanitarian-FOSS enterprise will help undergraduates see that designing and building software is an exciting, creative, and (often) a socially beneficial activity.

Under your “Get Involved” section of your website you mention developing a database of case studies and looking for people to help maintain it. We would like to learn more about this project and possibly contribute to it. Presently we have a group of students developing a “Humanitarian FOSS directory” where they would attempt to collate a list of open source projects specifically designed and built for non-profit usage. There might be some synergy between our project and your online database project. We also have several projects starting up with non-profit organizations that might serve as possible case studies for your database.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts,
Regards,
Trishan de Lanerolle
Project Director
Trinity- Conn College- Wesleyan CPATH Project
Computer Science, Trinity College, Hartford CT.
(860) 297 5313
http://www.hfoss.org

Open source tools and applications in medical informatics [Update]

A group of open source enthusiasts and professionals from various organizations in the academia and industry are presenting a workshop at the AMIA Symposium this November. The topic is "Open source tools and applications in medical informatics". We invite all those interested in using, contributing or collaborating to open source to attend. Presentations here.

Date:   11/10/07
Time:   7:00 pm - 9:30 pm
Location: Chicago 9 (Sheraton Chicago Hotel)
Registration/Fees: Included with AMIA conference registration. No separate registration or fees required.
AMIA Info page: http://www.amia.org/meetings/f07/showDoc.asp?DiD=30

The speakers, their affiliations (and their topics and websites) are:

Senthil Nachimuthu, University of Utah: Projeny (Probabilistic Networks Generator, http://projeny.sourceforge.net)
Eishay Smith / Matt Davis, IBM: Eclipse Open Healthcare Framework (http://www.eclipse.org/ohf)
Jon Teichrow, Webreach Inc: Mirth Project (HL7 Engine, http://www.mirthproject.org)
Paul Biondich, Regenstrief Institute: Open MRS (Electronic Medical Record, http://www.openmrs.org)
Cal Collins, Akaza Research: Open Clinica (Clinical trials software, http://www.openclinica.org)
Tom Jones, Tolven: Tolven (Clinician and Personal Electronic Health Record, http://www.tolven.org)
Will Ross, Mendocino Informatics: OpenEMPI (Enterprise Master Person Index, http://www.openempi.org)

All of the above software are released under various OSI-approved open source licenses. Please attend this workshop if you are interested in using or contributing to these projects, to learn about open source technologies in biomedical informatics, or to contribute to the discussion.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Regards,

Senthil.

-----------------------------------------------
Senthil Nachimuthu, MD
PhD Candidate - Biomedical Informatics

Department of Biomedical Informatics
26S 2000E Room 5775 HSEB
Salt Lake City, UT 84112
USA

Phone: +1 801 231 8282
Fax: +1 801 992 7242
Homepage: http://tux.med.utah.edu/~senthil
Email: senthil.nachimuthu@hsc.utah.edu

Evidence-Based Guidelines And Decision Support System

EGADSS is an open source tool that is designed to work in conjunction with primary care Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems to provide patient specific point of care reminders in order to aid physicians provide high quality care. EGADSS is designed as a stand alone system that would respond to requests from existing Electronic Medical Records such as Wolf, Med Access, and MedOffIS to provide patient specific clinical guidance based on its internal collection of guidelines. Centralizing guideline management under one tool (EGADSS) permits easier maintenance of the content. EGADSS will focus, initially, on preventive care reminders. The project began May 20, 2004 through a collaboration between members of the UBC Department of Family Practice, UVic's School of Health Information Science and Computer Science Department, CHIi, the National Research Council, and support from Vancouver Coastal Health .

Omeka

Omeka is a web platform for publishing collections and exhibitions online. Designed for cultural institutions, enthusiasts, and educators, Omeka is easy to install and modify and facilitates community-building around collections and exhibits. It is designed with non-IT specialists in mind, allowing users to focus on content rather than programming.

Omeka will come loaded with the following features:

• Dublin Core metadata structure and standards-based design that is fully accessible and interoperable
• Professional-looking exhibit sites that showcase collections without hiring outside designers
• Theme-switching for changing the look and feel of an exhibit in a few clicks
• Plug-ins for geolocation, bi-lingual sites, and a host of other possibilities
• Web 2.0 Technologies, including:
  • Tagging: Allow users to add keywords to items in a collection or exhibit
  • Blogging: Keep in touch with users through timely postings about collections and events
  • Syndicating: Update your users about your content with RSS feeds

Project Goals

Beginning in Fall 2007, CHNM will host and organize and open source community to plan, design, test, evaluate, and disseminate Omeka over four phases through September 2010, while working closely with our major partner, the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS).

We envision Omeka benefiting cultural institutions, enthusiasts, and educators in three ways:

1. Enable users to publish web content with a system that is low-cost and easy-to-use.

Since many cultural institutions publish limited web content because they lack trained staff and sufficient budgets to manage a professional online presence, CHNM will release Omeka as a free and open-source system that will be fully documented and easy to use for staff with little technical experience. Omeka offers users professional-looking design themes that showcase collections and eliminate the need to hire outside designers. CHNM also plans to offer a hosted version by 2009 for those who cannot run Omeka on their own servers.

2. Provide users with a standards-based, interoperable system that allows them to share and use digital content in multiple contexts.

When cultural heritage and teaching sites offer online resources, those digital pieces do not conform to basic metadata standards and do not meet accessibility guidelines, making resource sharing and reaching all potential visitors impossible. Omeka will be fully standards-based, both with regard to object metadata (Dublin Core) and to design interface (W3C), and to be extensible and interoperable with other Omeka installations and selected collections systems. This will allow users to re-use materials in multiple online contexts without redundant data entry and to share collections more easily with other users. By 2009, omeka.org will host a live directory that aggregates content from all Omeka installations to encourage resource sharing.

3. Facilitate users, in particular cultural institutions, engaging their publics and building communities around objects and primary sources.

Omeka will include basic Web 2.0 features such as an RSS feed, blog, and a tag cloud. Other planned plugins include a mapping function, and ways to collect and display stories and photos from web visitors who are demanding a different type of online interaction shaped by Web 2.0. Omeka offers organizations and individuals the opportunity to share in the creation of content. We encourage users to develop other Web 2.0 applications that fit into Omeka’s plugin architecture, and omeka.org will host a directory of all plugins created by the community. Interactive and participatory systems,like Omeka, build regular interaction with a base of online visitors and encourage democratic participation in the shaping of our culture.

Development for Omeka is funded by grants from the Institute of Museums and Library Services and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Omeka will be released under General Public License, Version 2.

http://omeka.org/blog/

Open Source Grid & Cluster Conference

Featuring: GlobusWorld, Grid Engine Workshop, Rocks Cluster Workshop

For Users, Administrators, and Developers of Open Source Grid and Cluster Software

May 2008 in the USA

Email info@OpenSourceGridCluster.org to be notified of details as they are finalized                        

As grid and cluster technologies transition to mainstream use, users — wary of high administration costs, expensive software, and proprietary lock-in for what are frequently mission critical functions — increasingly demand open source solutions.

At the 2008 Open Source Grid & Cluster Conference, current and potential users, administrators, and developers of open source grid and cluster software can:

    * Learn the latest best practices for using, managing and building grids and clusters using the world’s most popular open source grid and cluster software, including Globus, Grid Engine, Rocks, Ganglia, Cluster Express, and many other open source components.

    * Hear the experiences of real users applying this open source software in a wide range of commercial, research, educational, and biomedical environments.

    * Meet the developers responsible for this open source grid and cluster software.

    * Interact with others facing and addressing challenges similar to your own.

The program will include tracks dedicated to Globus (GlobusWorld), Grid Engine (Grid Engine Workshop), and Rocks (Rocks-A-Palooza). Other sessions will cover related open source grid and cluster software, and present cross-cutting material focused on end-user applications and grid and cluster operations. With a combination of in-depth tutorials, user experiences, technical architecture reviews, discussions of future directions, and much more, there will be something for everyone at this unique event.

The Open Source Grid & Cluster Conference will be held in May 2008 in the USA.

Email info@OpenSourceGridCluster.org to be notified of details as they are finalized.
Organizing Committee

Fritz Ferstl (Grid Engine)
Ian Foster (Globus)
Carl Kesselman (Globus)
Phil Papadopoulos (Rocks)
Steve Tuecke (Cluster Express)

This Day in "Open" and "Collabortition"

Cisco open sources, HCL publically evaluates management, Oracle wikis, Wrox rocks.
 

Certification Commission for Healthcare IT and Mitre Launch No-Cost, Open Source EHR Interoperability Testing Software

story here at ihealthbeat.org

<ed.note>It will be interesting to see how many Open Source EHRs they end up certifying...</ed.note>

Open Source Tools and Applications at American Medical Informatics Association

Will Ross, linuxmednews.com

Seven Open Source projects were featured at a workshop on Open Source software at the annual AMIA Symposium in Chicago, Illinois. Despite the Saturday evening time slot, about 60 conference attendees were treated to some inspiring presentations. Senthil Nachimuthu, M.D., organized the two and a half hour workshop. This year's AMIA Symposium on Biomedical and Health Informatics features 14 Workshops, 26 full or half day Tutorials, 96 Scientific Sessions, and over 300 poster presentations. The Symposium runs from November 10 to 14. More here.

Malaysian Government Open Source Software Conference, 6-7 December 2007

The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) of the Prime Minister's Department is organising the Malaysian Government Open Source Software Conference on 6-7 December 2007. Molly Cheah has been invited to present a paper "The OSS Revolution - Driving Business Applications: Using OSS in Healthcare Industry" as representative of OSHCA.

In conjunction with the conference, MAMPU is organising an exhibition and OSHCA had also been invited to showcase its members' OSS products and/or services during those 2 days.

Exhibition Goals:

• to showcase the OSS products, solutions and services that can be potentially used by the Public Sector. The exhibition is to demonstrate the readiness of the ICT industry to support the implementation of the Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Software Programme and also to encourage increased growth in the local OSS industry and community.
  
  
• The exhibition must reflect both quality and professionalism. It should be rich in content and showcase a variety of OSS products, solutions and services, ranging from emerging technologies to matured products. It should also demonstrate interoperability between OSS and proprietary products.

Thomas Beale asks: "Is openEHR a (defacto) standard for the Global Health Records?"

here (ppt).

HxTI Releases Xebra Free Open Source Software Secure Radiology Transmission Software

LinuxMedNews.com

"Philadelphia – November 6, 2007 – Today Hx Technologies, Inc. (HxTI) announced the public availability and free open source licensing of the Xebra™ platform for web-based distribution and clinical review of medical imaging. The software provides healthcare organizations and software developers with all the necessary components to securely transmit and review medical images over a network such as the Internet. Unlike its closed and proprietary predecessors locked to a single vendor, Xebra is intended to work alongside any picture archiving and communication system (PACS) and to provide advanced imaging capabilities to a wide range of healthcare IT applications.

Written in Java, the software is designed to run on any operating system with an ultra-thin client that can be launched over the Web without any installation required by the end user."

Full press release

Ignacio H. Valdes, MD, MS Opinion Piece: CCHIT Goes Back to the Future

here.

OpenKomodo is now available

Hi everyone,
After lots of hard work by the entire ActiveState team, OpenKomodo is now available as an open source project! We're very excited about this project and are looking forward to expanding the Komodo community with this entry into the open source world.  In the weeks to come, we'll be working on some new initiatives around OpenKomodo, as well as continuing our focus on bringing enhancements and updates to our commercial IDE version.

There's a some new information on the website at http://www.openkomodo.com/ around what we'll be doing and how you can get involved.

I wish everyone a safe and Happy Halloween!

Shane Caraveo
Komodo Lead

Education Without Borders

By Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems, Inc., Synnovation, p. 68-69. Related podcast here.

No one questions the right to learn, yet more than 100 million children worldwide do not have access to a primary education. Knowledge should never be proprietary.

While the No Child Left Behind Act helps to address this problem in the United States, the child we're holding back here and around the world, because of lack of Internet access and other economic hurdles, is of equal disaster and needs help, too. The solution to this challenge is simpler than you think. In the Participation Age, an age in which everyone and everything is interacting on The Network, the first step is to open source education.

Sustainable Technology Empowers Healthcare Delivery in Africa

"Palm" pilot programs in Kenya and Zambia demonstrate that open source mobile software increases countries' capacity to manage public health

Washington, D.C. (Vocus/ PRWEB ) October 10, 2007 -- The United Nations Foundation and Vodafone Group Foundation announced today the successful conclusion of two pilot mobile health data programs in Africa, and said that significant benefits to healthcare delivery in developing countries could be achieved by monitoring health data and tracking the progress of health campaigns using open source software on mobile hand-held devices.

The one-year pilot programs in Kenya and Zambia used EpiSurveyor software on Palm™ handheld devices to facilitate the supervision of public health clinics, and resulted in improved drug supply-chain management and more regular access to public health trends. Additionally, country health officials modified the EpiSurveyor software to track and contain disease outbreaks, and to identify immunization campaign coverage rates.

Empowered with sustainable open source technologies, developing-country public health professionals can get more critical health information that can be used to improve lives, fight disease, and reduce deaths all without expensive technology or outside consultants.

The pilots, part of the Foundations' Health Data Systems program, involved health experts from country governments, the World Health Organization (WHO) and DataDyne.org, and supported faster and broader access to in-country health data. In announcing the completion of the pilot programs today, the Foundations said they were pleased by the initial results and the demonstrated effectiveness of the vital role of mobile technology in improving healthcare delivery and battling disease.

"These programs build off our prior investments in integrated healthcare campaigns in Africa, where we've seen that successful Measles immunization campaigns rely on timely and accurate information from the field," said Tim Wirth, president of the UN Foundation. "Such information had been hard to come by in many countries, but now sustainable mobile technologies are addressing this challenge."

"By making information technology portable, simple and affordable we can effectively support public health programs - even in resource restrictive environments," said Andrew Dunnett, director of The Vodafone Group Foundation. "This project effectively lowers the barriers to public health management, and puts access to health data collection and management tools squarely in the hands of developing-country public health officials."

Designed to facilitate the supervision of health data in public clinics using handheld computers, the initiative broke ground when country officials modified the open source EpiSurveyor data-gathering software to meet other public health needs as they arose. In Kenya health officials modified EpiSurveyor to investigate and contain a polio outbreak, and in Zambia health officials modified the software to conduct a post-measles-immunization campaign coverage survey to identify which children had not been vaccinated. Because the EpiSurveyor application is open source, its application was owned and controlled entirely by WHO and country health officials without depending on outside consultants.

"Empowered with sustainable open source technologies, developing-country public health professionals can get more critical health information that can be used to improve lives, fight disease, and reduce deaths all without expensive technology or outside consultants," said Joel Selanikio, co-founder of DataDyne.org, the non-profit organization that developed the fee-free EpiSurveyor software.

Following completion of the pilot programs, the Foundations are continuing their work with DataDyne.org, the WHO, and national ministries of health to expand the Health Data Systems program. The WHO has announced that it intends to make EpiSurveyor a standard for data collection in sub-Saharan Africa, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has downloaded the free EpiSurveyor software and is using it to collect integrated health data in Sierra Leone.

Note to editors
For more information about how EpiSurveyor was used to fight polio in Kenya, visit http://www.unfoundation.org/files/pdf/2007/EpiSurveyor_Polio_Kenya.pdf . And to learn more about the Zambia pilot, see http://www.undispatch.com/archives/2007/09/how_pdas_are_sa.php#more . EpiSurveyor is available for download at http://www.datadyne.org/?q=episurveyor/home. Photos and interviews with health experts participating in the pilot programs are available through the press contacts provided below. 'Open source' software refers to software that is intended to be freely shared, improved, and redistributed.

About the UN Foundation and The Vodafone Group Foundation Partnership
The UN Foundation-Vodafone Group Foundation (VGF) alliance strives to be the leading public-private partnership using strategic technology programs to strengthen the UN's humanitarian efforts worldwide. Created in October 2005, with a £10 million commitment from VGF matched by £5 million from the UN Foundation, the Partnership has three core commitments: (1) to develop rapid response telecoms teams to aid disaster relief; (2) to develop health data systems that improve access to health data thereby helping to combat disease; and (3) to promote research and innovative initiatives using technology as an agent and tool for international development. Further information can be found on: www.unfoundation.org/vodafone.

About DataDyne and Episurveyor
DataDyne was formed in 2003 by physician/epidemiologist Joel Selanikio, formerly of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and technologist Rose Donna, formerly of the American Red Cross, to increase the quantity and quality of data available for worldwide public health. DataDyne works with mobile information technologies including handheld computers, smartphones, the Internet, and GPS, to break down the barriers to data utilization and create sustainable data flows in developing countries. DataDyne's premier product is the award-winning EpiSurveyor, a free, open-source data-gathering software suite for handheld computers and smartphones. Based on the success of the pilot programs in Kenya and Zambia, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control is now using EpiSurveyor software in Sierra Leone.

Press contacts:

In Washington:
Adele Waugaman
United Nations Foundation
(t) + 1 202 778 1635
(e) awaugaman (at) unfoundation.org
(w) www.unfoundation.org/vodafone

In London:
Darren Milner
Four Communications
(t) + 44 (0)870 444 4568
(e) darren.milner (at) fourcommunications.com

In Newbury:
Katherine Danby
Vodafone Group Foundation
(t): +44 (0) 7795047 471
(f): +44 (0)1635 686484
(e) katherine.danby (at) vodafone.com
(w) http://www.vodafonefoundation.org

Zyxware Releases Free and Open Source Software to track epidemics like Chikungunya, Malaria, Dengue

A new software developed by Zyxware Technologies all about to revolutionize the way information is collected and processed in tracking diseases like Chikungunya, Dengue, Malaria. The software, is being dedicated to the nation as Free Software under the GNU General Public License (GPL) on 5th October 2007. The first copy of the software will be handed over to the Hon’ble Minister for Health Smt. P. K. Sreemathi Teacher in a function to be held at the minister’s office.

The software is web based and allows Hospitals to report cases of diseases as soon as the case is registered at the hospital. The software seamlessly integrates with the existing manual process by allowing hospitals that does not have any web access to send paper based reports to data entry operators who can enter them into the system or send soft copies of the reports that can be imported automatically. The system allows secure login with role based privileges for different roles like Government Medical Official, Hospital Staff, Data Access Operators and System Administrator.

The GIS interface uses Google maps to present the data on a real time basis on a map of the state. Cases of diseases are represented by markers on the map and easy visual analysis of the pattern and extent of spread of diseases is possible. The GIS and reporting interface processes the cases registered and presents reports that can be used by the Health Department to monitor the situation on a real time basis and take precautionary measures if required. Such a system will help in preventing occurrences of disease outbreaks of the scale experienced by the State of Kerala in the last couple of years.

It is for the first time that such a software is being developed and released as free and open source software. One of the objectives in releasing the software as Free and Open Source Software is to promote the fact that it is possible to

• Develop state of the art software at very low costs and a developing country like India does not have to languish behind other IT leaders in any areas and
• To inspire youngsters to take bold steps in trying out their ideas and following their dreams instead of orthodox careers.

More here.

Please Clone Our Plone - Open eGov at Newport News

The City of Newport News is offering the software that runs its web site as well as the knowledge base we created through the implementation process to any organization or individual, free of charge. Our intent is to create a collaborative software ecosystem, where government organizations, non-profits and the private sector work together to share the cost of enhanced capabilities.

Paper Companies vs. Proprietary EHR Companies

Original article.

"The heated battle between paper companies and proprietary EHR companies for market share is always fascinating to watch. Linux Medical News labs weighs in on the subject by doing a rigorous, side-by-side comparison of Paper company products vs. Proprietary Electronic Health Record software company products. The results may surprise you.

The conclusions of our expert analysis of paper company products vs. proprietary Electronic Health Record company products is as follows:

   1. Don't have to worry about the 'other' paper company doing the right thing and playing nice with your paper company.

   2. When a paper company is bought out or fails, all hell does not break loose, no one is stranded, the paper users don't care.

   3. Paper companies don't have to make suspicious promises that they won't control or sell your records and that they'll let you 'export' your data if you don't like the software.

   4. No one is ever fired for using a paper company.

   5. No need for government to 'financially incentivize the use of paper technology in medical practice' or change Stark laws in order to make the use of paper more widespread.

   6. Novel uses of paper like for airplanes or signs are easily built on top of the existing paper company product substrate. It isn't necessary to get permission or negotiate agreements for 3rd party re-selling of paper airplanes with the paper company.

   7. Paper companies don'