Med-e-Tel 2009 – Friday miscellany

A shorter report this morning, as I have been more actively involved in the workshop I attended, and so taking less notes. For the first part of the morning,  I attended the workshop on “Sustainable collaborations in healthcare open source software”, run by Etienne Saliez and Thomas Karopka. Etienne introduced the session, and the first draft of the website developed to discuss the issues – www.chos-wg.eu Thomas introduced a range of issues, which have also been previously discussed at a meeting in Portugal earlier this year – http://mimwiki.med.up.pt/images/a/a0/Osehc-thomas_karopka_text.pdf

A new proposed strategy is being explored, to include:
(1) FLOSS-HC inventory – What is already there?
(2) FLOSS-HC communication platform and software repository – Where to find applications and information
about FLOSS-HC
(3) FLOSS-HC use case data base – What is really needed?  These use cases and may be workflows
should describe the use cases from the health professional view point.
(4) FLOSS-HC knowledge base – Description of modules and their capabilities

The discussion focused on different needs in different parts of world, the possibility to develop regional collaborations among groups woring in free/libre and open source in health(care), and whether it might be possible to develop some kind of  certification process for FLOSS-HC products. The example of the EOS (enterprise open source) directory – http://www.eosdirectory.com/ – was introduced, and we discussed whether a similar area is needed for healthcare OS.

I then went to try and listen to another telenursing session, but the speaker had not turned up. However, I caught  good presntation from Maurice Mars (University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) on his experiences of delivering a telemedicine training course in Rwanda. His summary of things to take into account when teaching in such areas echoed my own recent experience of teaching in South Africa, including not to rely on the infrastructure (Internet, electricity) always being reliably avaialable, to have materials available on CD-ROM, and to focus on ‘key lessons/issues’, rather than trying to teach too much in a short period.

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