Health
From OpenEGov
Contents |
NHS Policies
The NHSIA would be where you would expect to find information on open source in the NHS. And in fact there is the odd old news item. But as far as general policies go, Microsoft and its allies sometimes manage to completely reverse them: see this story from El Reg - did you know that proprietary software 'guarantees reliability and future maintenance'? The original NHS policy is still available from the wayback machine at http://web.archive.org/web/20040204194259/http://www.nhsia.nhs.uk/text/pages/features/i_250202.asp
But in the meantime it looks like any high profile news on open source adoption is likely to be just negotiating tactics to get Microsoft prices down (Accenture's charges, however, don't seem to merit such visible discussion). For real examples of the diffference open source can make you need to look at cases from elsewhere, such as this Irish report (pdf) on how open source saved an Irish hospital 13 million euros over 5 years.
In the meantime, as usual, open source will be adopted from below because it works.
Background Papers
Open source - global issues oriented to health practictioners
Communities
The Open Source Nursing Informatics (OSNI) Working Group of IMIA-NI was established in June 2003. It invites all nurses with an interest in open source and free software to become involved with the group, and aims to provide an information and educational resource for those who want to know more.
The IMIA Open Source Health Informatics Working Group ([OSWG) brings together experts and interested individuals from a wide range of health professions and with a range of interests in the potential application of open source solutions within their domains of expertise.
The Open Source Health Care Alliance website seems to be unmaintained but the associated mailing lists are very much alive.
Discussion of the recent Microsoft NHS deal on Slashdot produced much useful information.
News Sites
Open source projects
care2x is an integrated health administration system (gpl), funded by the Brazilian government among others.
dataserver middleware for xml-based medical data exchange.
Open Source Health Records Exchange (US based)
Open ECG : open standards for ECGs.
FreeMED is an open source practice management and electronic and computer records system.
Dutch open source
OpenSDE structured data entry for patient records.
Openkaart is working on data models and messaging protocols.
