Dear Andrew,
The expectations for MEDINFO2001 were high from the organisers' side. The
reasons why it went smallish are still to be investigated (one may argue
that it's due to the pricey registration fees and stay - yet it does not
explain fully the low attendance). Your impression that "it draws primarily
publicly-funded projects/developers/government staffers" might be due to the
booth of the European Commission which indeed was central and the largest
booth (it was originally only one of these booths). It was also our will to
show visibility as much as we could on the booth, thus bringing 9 more
projects to the 9 originally planned for the booth (in order to avoid
looking smallish in front of the other large booths which did not show up
eventually). BSTD (and SMARTIE - hundred of applications to run on PDA, and
SPIRIT :-) are full OS projects. BSTD will also be hosted on the SPIRIT web
site. I don't know about esper: do you have more information (who, where,
what, url)?
Do not forget that several past projects of the European Commission went
Open Source (GEHR some 7-8 years ago, GALEN -www.opengalen.org- with, last
week, online publication of the ontological tools created to ease the
process) or on the verge to go Open Source (such as synex which you knew
already). I wish that the same momentum would happen for our transatlantic
fellow colleagues on the same scale.
With respect to presentors, medinfo is one of the highest-quality scientific
conferences in health telematics. The 3-4 presentations I could attend (the
rest of the time was spent on the EC booth) did not give me this impression.
What was your feeling?
Sincerely,
-Yves
Yves Paindaveine
European Commission - Information Society DG (formerly DGXIII)
Avenue de Beaulieu 31, BU31 6/81, B-1160 Bruxelles
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel: +32.2.296.85.48 fax: +32.2.296.0181
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Ho [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: vendredi 14 septembre 2001 23:54
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Report from Medinfo2001
>
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> What follows is what I learned and what I think may interest the
> openhealth participants. Hopefully my omissions, errors, and
> bias will be
> quickly pointed out, challenged, and corrected. (Horst Herb, David
> Chan, Cito Maramba, the Minoru team, and perhaps others from this list
> were also there. :-)
>
> 1. Medinfo2001 meeting (London) is a smallish meeting that
> draws primarily
> publicly-funded projects/developers/government staffers. Commercial
> vendors/consultant types are visibly under-represented.
>
> 2. Familiarity with open source methods are high. Major obstacle to
> releasing code seems to be lack of interest or fear of
> forming/supporting
> a developer/user community. There is apparently little
> funding incentive
> for this. Many projects with production code and even
> professed plan to
> release code may choose to delay release of code for this reason.
>
> 3. Several publicly-funded projects are on the verge of going
> open-source.
> For example, PICNIC
> (http://www.medcom.dk/picnic/OpenSource/default.htm),
> BSTD (http://itch.uvic.ca/itch2000/PRUNA/PRUNA.HTM), and
> perhaps certain
> automated guildeline projects (EsPer?).
>
> 4. Minoru/EuSpirit had part of the large EU booth. Brian
> Bray, Dave Scott,
> and Bud Bruegger took turns there. A video of MUFFIN starring
> David Chan
> M.D. was playing in the background. It was too bad that they were not
> able to hand out a CD or URL that contains downloadable/runnable open
> source software. A live demo system would be good too.
>
> 5. The vast majority of presentors have not and do not have
> plans to make
> their code available for peer-review or re-use. This makes
> the Medinfo2001
> experience rather frustrating. One hears success story after
> success story
> - without the ability to know what was done or
> replicate/build-upon each
> other's "success". Very very sad.
>
> 6. The level of participant interactions and discussions was extremely
> low. Critical remarks are entirely absent. Congratulatory comments are
> rampant. Maybe this has to do with the number of famous professors and
> department directors? (And, perhaps made worse by the
> strangulating effect
> of the ubiquitous neck ties??)
>
> 7. This makes me wonder about the future of the every 3-year Medinfo
> meeting. Maybe the OSHCA annual meeting will become the
> favorite for the
> working medical systems researchers?
>
> (my impression of OSHCA2001 to follow)
>
> Best regards,
>
> Andrew
> ---
> Andrew P. Ho, M.D.
> OIO:Open Infrastructure for Outcomes
> www.TxOutcome.Org
> Assistant Clinical Professor
> Department of Psychiatry, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
> University of California, Los Angeles
>
>
