July 16-20, 2012
Portland, Oregon

Open Standards and Open Architecture in Global Health: Saving Lives with Open Source

Paul Biondich (OpenMRS), Derek Ritz (ecGroup Inc.), Dykki Settle (IntraHealth International), Eduardo Jezierski (InSTEDD)

10:40am Thursday, 07/19/2012

Healthcare
Location: E146

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Presentation: Open Standards and Open Architecture in Global Health_ Saving Lives with Open Source Presentation [PDF]

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The notions of open architecture and open standards both hold a great deal of promise. Attempts to implement and scale Health IT solutions throughout much of the developed world (and the plethora of legacy systems communicating with proprietary messaging) quickly taught us the value for such standards to promote interoperability. We will discuss how the use of open architecture in one large-scale national project allowed aspects of work to continue uninterrupted while by taking advantage of the ability to swap out components as needed. As well as through the adoption and application of open standards for interoperability can be promoted and supported.

During this talk you will hear perspectives from various stakeholders in this project about:

How some of the standards have been developed and validated,
Some of the practical issues faced with using standards in countries that had limited participation in the development of those standards,
How using open Open Standards for Health IT benefits funders and in-country stakeholders, and
How the strategic reuse of materials and artifacts can provide a significant time and effort advantage for other participants.

We will provide real-world practical advice on incorporating open standards into Health IT software, and will show the impact this is having on the ground—and how open systems are actually saving lives.

Paul Biondich

OpenMRS

Dr. Paul Biondich is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Informatics at the Indiana University School of Medicine; Investigator at the Regenstrief Institute; Director of Informatics for the Indiana University Center for Global Health; and Director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Medical Informatics. His primary career focus is in the research and development of health information systems for resource poor settings. Dr. Biondich leads the open source, global community project Open Medical Record System (OpenMRS) which collaboratively develops a freely available, medical record system platform presently utilized in over forty countries throughout the world. He is also actively involved in the Health Informatics Public Private Partnership, a PEPFAR sponsored initiative to provide adaptive technical assistance towards development of sustainable health information exchanges within low and middle income countries.

Web site

Derek Ritz

ecGroup Inc.

Derek Ritz is the principal consultant at ecGroup Inc., based in Ancaster, Canada. He is an advisor to public and private sector clients in Canada and internationally regarding m/eHealth strategy, architecture, implementation and adoption.

Derek is a delegate of Canada to ISO/TC-215 (Health Informatics) and was the inaugural vice-Chair of Canada Health Infoway’s Infostructure & Architecture Standards Collaborative Working Group. In 2007, he helped fund and launch Canada’s national EHR architectural Reference Implementation at the Mohawk Applied Research Centre in Health Informatics (MARC-HI). Since 2010, Derek has been involved in numerous global m/eHealth projects, including leading an IDRC-funded project to establish the Health Enterprise Architecture Lab (HEAL) at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in Durban, South Africa.

Web site

Dykki Settle

IntraHealth International

Dykki Settle leads IntraHealth and CapacityPlus endeavors in health worker informatics, bringing a health worker-centered approach to the availability and use of high quality information for better health. Settle leads the global development and implementation community for the open source iHRIS suite human resources for health information solutions. Other areas of leadership include helping countries build absorptive capacity for new health technologies and supporting regional and country health organizations to realize the power of open source for global health. Settle began his career as the first webmaster for the SunSITE project—now www.ibiblio.org, one of the earliest, largest and longest-running online libraries of open resources.

Web site

Eduardo Jezierski

InSTEDD

Eduardo is the CTO of InSTEDD – working to create a world where communities everywhere design and use technology to continuously improve their health, safety and development. InSTEDD does it with agile design in the field, local Innovation Labs, and an open-source platform of mobile and cloud technologies that have improved lives around the world, from Haiti to villages in South East Asia.

Web site