Hi All, On Sat, 2008-02-16 at 09:59 -0800, Gregory Woodhouse wrote:
> I'm not familiar OEMR, but if it stands for Open EMR, isn't that a > particular product? > > In any case, I don't think anyone has a moral right to insist that > anyone wanting to work in the area of open source medical > applications do so under the aegis of their organization. I agree. I have worked with Dr. Bowen in the past and it was a great experience but it seems that the interest of the OEMR organization is very tightly centered around OpenEMR much like the FreeMED Foundation (another non-profit) is centered around promoting FreeMED and the openEHR Foundation has a mandate to support and protect the use and distribution of the openEHR specifications and software. There is nothing wrong with this, it just appears to me that Fred is proposing a project neutral organization. In this case the only organization I can think of that it would be in any way in competition with is OSHCA. I believe that FMFS and OSHCA can be complimentary. Over the past 10 years or so we have seen a huge growth in this area. In terms of interest and international funding for projects. But we are still VERY MUCH in the embryonic stages. Many analogies apply here; "Let a thousand flowers bloom", "A rising tide floats all boats", etc. Sometimes it is difficult to see the forest for the trees when you are on the ground. Let us mature together as an industry. I suggest that we support Fred's efforts. There are significant efforts involved in this venture. FMFS may succeed or it may fail. But we can and will all learn along the way. Bruce Perens recently wrote basically a history of "open source" since he and Eric Raymond defined the term in February 1998 and started the Open Source Initiative (sorry no link at hand). He (and I) marveled at far we have come in Decade 0. I believe that OSI was significant in this growth. It took time, energy and money (and marketing) to make things happen. Maybe FMFS can be that organization for healthcare? Regards, Tim -- Timothy Cook, MSc Health Informatics Research & Development Services LinkedIn Profile:http://www.linkedin.com/in/timothywaynecook Skype ID == timothy.cook ************************************************************** *You may get my Public GPG key from popular keyservers or * *from this link http://timothywayne.cook.googlepages.com/home* ************************************************************** [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
