Re: [Hardhats-members] Identify research needs - input from the Vista community

[Chris Richardson]

Clinton;      You have been reading our mind.   These are issues which are near and dear to our hearts.  As you might imagine, VistA has been built by area specialist (physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and other professionals who had to live with the product).  They have added to the model in numerous ways.   These decades of progress are a legacy we want to keep intact and continue the evolution of this Open Source model into the possible tool kit what should be available to all health care providers everywhere.   Welcome!  We are looking forward to meeting with you and your associates in Boston.  You might add to your list, internationalization.      Excellent;   Chris Richardson ----- Original Message ----- From: Daniel, Clinton E. To: hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Monday, March 07, 2005 1:37 PM Subject: [Hardhats-members] Identify research needs - input from the Vista community Clinton Daniel here. I am the University of South Florida (USF) graduate student in Tampa, Florida. Myself, along with two other students will be attending the 12th Vista Community meeting in Boston, MA. We are interested in a number of areas concerning the Vista system, ie. FOIA Vista or OpenVista - or others versions.   Our interest in the meeting is to learn as much as we can about the Vista system and to identify as many research needs as possible which could benefit the Vista community and Health Information Systems. Below are some ideas that have been drafted. If any of the terms used below have not been clearly defined within your community or Vista projects in general (ie. "open source") and could be applied in a more literal sense, then please feel free to correct our terminology as it relates to the question. Any input would be greatly appreciated.   We would like to have an open session in which we discuss possible academic research directions.  Practicioner input would be greatly appreciated as key figures in the academic community (Zmud and Benbasat, Davenport and Markus, Lyytinen, Lee) have been calling for more relevance in MIS research.    Topics open for discussion would include, but not be limited to:   Innovation diffusion - how can we (the IS community) spread the use of VISTA and other open source technologies?   Change management - how can we (the IS community) manage and integrate software changes (resulting from moving from proprietary to open source) into business practices?   Standards definitions - how can we (the IS community) set standards for different open source technologies?   Open source quality - how can we (the IS community) ensure software quality.  This is especially relevant when applied to health information technology as changes in formats, processes or variable naming, may have an impact on a patient's well-being.   Open source data management - how can we (the IS community) manage our data for these open source initiatives? What tools should be supported? What processes should be implemented?   Open source security initiatives - how can we (the IS community) protect our open source systems from third parties?   Open source systems - how can we (the IS community) facilitate the design and implementation of systems of systems?   Open source metrics - how can we (the IS community) establish metrics for systems, like the VISTA system, to better compare different implementations/organizations that run these systems?   Practicioners comments and ideas would be welcomed to flesh out the research opportunities that exist in the open source community.