The conference listed in the second Google blog is organized by the Markle Foundation. These are the same people who are organizing the Dossia omnimedix effort. I did some more research and it appears that the Dossia project is all open source. You can download the software from Regenstrief and OpenMRS.org
http://openmrs.org/wiki/OpenMRS http://www.connectingforhealth.org/commonframework/ http://www.regenstrief.org/medinformatics/download License appears to be of GPL type but with restrictions that can't take money for it. http://www.connectingforhealth.org/license.html /Mark --- In openhealth@yahoogroups.com, Tim Churches <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Wayne Wilson wrote: > > I don't know whether this has been covered before or not, but the > > Dossia announcement is making some waves among the US provider > > community, especially those of us at the starting gate with patient > > portals. > > > > http://www.omnimedix.org > > > > Does anyone know the technical strategy here? This would be a prime > > candidate to re-use open source work on health care records, but I > > see little to no indications of that. The major employers forming > > the core consortium funding this effort; Walmart, Intel, BP have been > > involved in the open source world themselves, but since work is being > > done by Omnimedix, using technical people from the 'financial > > industry' (this is revealed in their press release and is supposed to > > make us feel good about security of the system) I wonder....... > > > > Is this yet another large scale, US led consortium effort that will > > end up mixed up in proprietary software? Or in systems that are > > described as 'open' but are closed unless you pay a fee? > > They may soon have some very serious competition, judging from these > blog entries and the conference address referred to in the second one: > > http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/health-care-information-matters.html > > http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/thoughts-on-health-care-continued.html > > An interesting prospect, if Google repeats what it has done in the past. > Certainly it has the technical infrastructure to host a huge-scale EHR > without raising a sweat, and it has demonstrated the technical capacity > to design consumer-oriented Web-based applications which are at once > easy-to-use and surprisingly sophisticated. But most interesting has > been Google's willingness to expose APIs to its Web applications, which > allow many third-party value-added flowers to bloom. If they provided an > API like the one for Google Maps for Google EHR, then many interesting > things might be possible, with space made for lots of open source tools > to add value. However, at the end of the day, Google is a highly > profitable corporation which needs to make money, and the key question > for it will be how to make money from a consumer-facing EHR, given that > targetted advertising by pharmaceutical companies and suppliers, or > medical and health service suppliers (and even malpractice suit > attorneys..., or quacks and charletons with magic cures), would be > either transgressing advertising laws or sailing rather close to the > ethical wind. > > Alternatively, Google (or Amazon, another company with massive > Web-oriented IT resources) might just provide technical infrastructure > (in the form of a Web-based EHR platform and the hosting of it) which is > leased or sold or even given for free to community-based or other > consortia of health core providers, or to employer groups, or whatever - > so not just one Google EHR, but many. And not supported by advertising, > or perhaps not so much. > > Much speculation is possible, but it seems likely that Google will get > into the Web-based consumer EHR game before too long - it can't ignore > the health care sector, given that it eats up nearly 15% of the US GDP > and accounts for increasing proportions of GDP in other rich nations. > > Tim C >
