[Ip-health] Open Source software applications for health care

[James Love]

*  The goal of Open Health Tools is to bring together stakeholders to
develop software that enables different information systems to
interoperate and share data. The initiative brings together national
consumers, standards development organizations, health care
professionals, commercial vendors and open source programmers. =E2=80=9CAll
plans and codes will be developed in the open,=E2=80=9D McGaughey says. =E2=
=80=9CIt=E2=80=99s
like Linux and there will be lots of different software components.=E2=80=
=9D

* Charter government agencies involved in Open Health Tools include the
Veterans Health Administration in the United States, Health Infoway Inc.
in Canada, National Health Service in England and National e-Health
Transition Authority in Australia.


http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/open_source26056-1.html

Effort to Promote Open Source Apps

April 7, 2008

Organizations in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United
States have formed a new consortium to promote the use of open source
software in health care.

The initiative, called Open Health Tools Inc., is based on the model of
the Eclipse Foundation, which is an open source community of developers
who provide software components that others can use to build software
products. Skip McGaughey, a co-founder of Ottawa-based Eclipse, is
executive director of Asheville, N.C.-based Open Health Tools.

The goal of Open Health Tools is to bring together stakeholders to
develop software that enables different information systems to
interoperate and share data. The initiative brings together national
consumers, standards development organizations, health care
professionals, commercial vendors and open source programmers. =E2=80=9CAll
plans and codes will be developed in the open,=E2=80=9D McGaughey says. =E2=
=80=9CIt=E2=80=99s
like Linux and there will be lots of different software components.=E2=80=
=9D

Charter government agencies involved in Open Health Tools include the
Veterans Health Administration in the United States, Health Infoway Inc.
in Canada, National Health Service in England and National e-Health
Transition Authority in Australia.

Initial participating standards development organizations are Health
Level Seven, Healthcare Services Specifications Project, International
Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation and Object
Management Group.

Vendors and open source organizations providing software include B2
International, BT, CollabNet, Eclipse, IBM Corp., Innoopract, Inpriva,
JP Systems, Kestral, NexJ Systems, Ocean Informatics, Oracle Corp.,
Ozmosis, Palamida and Red Hat.

Many of these vendors are veterans of the open source community, and all
bring special skills, McGaughey says. Inpriva, for instance, specializes
in security, Kestral in radiology and medical imaging, and Palamida in
intellectual property licensing.

Open Health Tools is creating an international council of clinicians to
ensure that the group=E2=80=99s work will meet the needs of health
professionals.

The initiative is seeking additional participation from all industry
stakeholders, including established health care I.T. vendors. More
information is available openhealthtools.org.


--
_____________________________
James Love, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
http://www.keionline.org, mailto:james.love@keionline.org
voice +1.202.332.2670, fax +1.202.332.2673, US mobile +1.202.361.3040, Gene=
va mobile +41.76.413.6584

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