OSHCA 2000

OSHCA 2000 Rome

Inaugural Meeting
Place: Rome, Italy
Date: June 1 & 2, 2000
Sponsors:

Day 1: OSHCA Innaugural Meeting

Dan Ezeokoli of the International Atomic Energy Agency opened the meeting, welcoming everyone to Rome and FAO, emphasizing that "OSHCA Could be the start of a snowball that had the potential to become very big".

Presentations

Brian Bray, president of Minoru Development Corporation, picked up from Dan, giving a short positioning statement outlining his own background. Brian discussed why open source is the way forward, and what we need to do as a group to proceed. "We need to gain critical mass, and work together on a global scale".

Joseph Dal Molan, also from Minoru Development Corporation, gave a presentation on behalf of Dr Alvin Marcelo from the University of the Philippines, who was unable to attend the meeting in person. Alvin's presentation focused the fact that the University of the Philippines/Philippine General Hospital would be an ideal testing ground for open source health informatics solutions.

The University of the Philippines signified its intent to actively participate in OSHCA, and the General Hospital itself is "committed to building 100% open source hospital information system, based on open standards".

To conclude the positioning presentations, Dr Adrian Midgley, a General Practicioner based in Exeter, UK, discussed his views and requirements of open source from the family practice perspective. "The art of medicine lasts, but software companies don't... business stability is essential".

Bud Brugger from Sistema, presented his interests from a FAO/Sistema perspective, indicating what, as an edge group, they can bring to OSHCA: 1) Animal health vision. 2) Vision for developing countries. Bud keyed in on the question: "Why the big interest in an open source solution?", and provided the following answers: "1) There is a new generation buy-in to use all open source tools, 2) FAO, as part of the UN, has to provide software for free, 3) We want to move towards a sustainable solution, i.e. when the funding ends the project doesn't and the momentum still exists".

Developing and Adopting the Charter

Bud led the discussion on the OSHCA charter. In addition to some wording amendments, there were several additions to the charter. (Refer to amended charter on the OSHCA website). It was unanimously agreed that one of OSHCA's strengths is the fact that it is a valuable forum, one which recognizes supporters and cooperators. Consequently, the term 'OSCHA members' in the charter was changed to "OSHCA supporters" to better reflect the nature of the Open Source Health Care Alliance.

Trademarking OSHCA

It was decided that OSHCA should become a trademarked name. In order to indicate this, and make an in-use claim, it will now be referred to on appropriate occasions in documentation as OSCHA [tm]. This will officially be applied for in the future, when the question of who should hold the trademark will be addressed. Minoru Development Corporation will continue to hold the web address in trust.

Day 2: Open Source Laboratory Information Systems Meeting

Background

The Joint FAO/IAEA Joint Division ( http://www.iaea.org/programmes/nafa), Vienna is in the early phases of developing a laboratory information system. The system is called LABInfo and will be designed for veterinary medicine in developing countries. The vision of LABInfo is direct support to process control and information management, for a wide variety of urban and rural veterinarian laboratories. LABInfo is also part of a much larger effort to eradicate Rinderpest and other trans-boundary animal diseases. LABInfo will integrate local data with an epidemiological information system called TADInfo, developed by Sistema for the FAO. TADInfo is deployed in more than twenty countries and has a rapidly growing user base. ( http://www.fao.org/waicent/FaoInfo/Agricult/AGA/AGAH/EMPRES/Tadinfo/TADinfo.htm)

Introduction

Dr. Martyn Jeggo, Head of the Animal Production and Health Section at the Joint Division, officially opened the meeting. As initiator of the LABinfo project, Dr. Jeggo described the history of LABInfo and how it contributes to the goals of the Joint Division by improving the quality of laboratory diagnosis and encouraging the use of standard operating procedures. LABInfo also supports the role of the IAEA in promoting quality assurance and advancing laboratories in the developing countries towards international accreditation and food security.

The Joint Division co-sponsored the OSHCA inauguration meeting and the Laboratory Information Systems Meeting, as a means to publicly announce the LABInfo project and invite participation from the open source health care community.

LABInfo and Open Source

Based on recommendations by Sistema and others, the strategic approach of the Joint Division will be to develop LABInfo as open source software. Sistema is working to create a consortium of experts in laboratory information systems and open advanced software development.

Dr. Jeggo and others remarked on the new possibilities that derive from the open source approach. The LABInfo project is an opportunity to explore new ways of collaboration between the public and private sectors.

The Joint Division also recognizes the commonality between veterinary and human diagnostic laboratories. This provides the opportunity to develop a common health information system that could be deployed in the developing countries by the WHO and other UN organizations. This link, between veterinary and human health, will make the development of LABInfo more attractive to a wider variety of potential collaborators.

The Emerging LABInfo Community

Dr. Pascal Hendrikx, a veterinary epidemiologist with CIRAD (http://www.cirad.fr), confirmed CIRAD's interest in the LABInfo consortium based on their collaboration on TADInfo. Dr. Hendrikx led a discussion of the special needs of veterinary diagnostic laboratories in African and how these relate to the functions of a conventional human diagnostic laboratory.

In the extensive working session that followed the presentations, issues of discussion included: open source community building, collaboration between public and private sectors, funding strategies, and extensions of LABInfo to human health and food monitoring.

Sistema has been providing the technical concepts and strategies in LABInfo. To this resource are now added several experts in open source software and business development from Minoru Development Corporation. It was agreed that the Joint Division would provide the impetus for Sistema and Minoru to expand the LABInfo development consortium and explore innovative strategies for funding.

Next Steps

The group agreed to develop clear mission and vision statements, a product prospectus and a work plan for action. A stage-gate approach to the first phases of the project was adopted for the purposes of effective risk management. Dr. Hendrikx proposed that CIRAD host the next LABInfo meeting in Montpellier, France.