Hello Lopo, Thanks for sharing your ideas! I sincerely appreciate your input. You are more knowledgeable than me concerning all these alternate means to e-mail. Just to clarify the e-mail solution I mentioned, note that it (a) uses encrypted file attachments, not plain text email messages; (b) uses aliases, not patient names; (c) would operate on a VPN; and (d) can decomposite the attached data file, so that other patient identifiers (e.g., all demographic data) are sent separately from the other data (e.g., they can be sent to subscribers along with the reporting templates when the publisher-subscriber connection is first made and prior to any clinical data being shipped). These would comply with HIPAA regs.
Nevertheless, a great thing about OS is the opportunity to explore alternatives. As such, I am eager to learn about different methods for data transmission, as well as alternatives to Excel spreadsheets. So, I fully support all innovative ideas (including yours), even though they may be beyond my personal technological skill set. All that matters to me is that we continually evolve a collaborative solution that provides the least costly, most secure way to create, deliver and use better knowledge supporting ever-more effective and efficient delivery of quality care. FYI - We are closing in on a dual licensing OS approach and the subsequent release of our source code, but it will take several more weeks. Thanks again, Steve --- In openhealth@yahoogroups.com, "Lopo Lencastre de Almeida" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi Steve, > > On your blog, at [1], you said this: > > «(...) occasional e-mail over low bandwidth connections and a > spreadsheet. For many regions of the world, our low cost, low resource > consumption, peer-to-peer solution makes very good sense.» > > IMHO, I disagree with this approach of using an email system for > solving this bandwidth problem of the poor countries. > > Sending an email wouldn't be a great solution since you will have to > comply with HIPAA and other national regulation in what concerns data > retention, transmission and its security[2], and not only in the > richer countries as you surely know. I do believe you tought about it > and got a solution but... > > Using plain text email messages is not the best way to do it hence you > will have to have either a POP3 server with SSL/TLS or will have to > encrypt and sign the message to guarantee that it is secure to use and > that patient's private data is safe all the way. > > Besides that, and even if you don't need the message encryption, email > messages have a few lines in the header that are useless to anything > else than email programs. And those extra lines mean extra bytes > transmited in the same connection. And on fail all the email must be > re-fetched. > > A much better solution would be to use, on the client side, GNU/Linux > (Xubuntu[3] or Puppy[4] with LightHttpd[5] running on localhost, > PHP[6] and sqlLite[7]) plus a light browser or Swiftfox[8] for low end > PCs or PHP-GTK[9] or even Python[10], Ruby[11] or Perl; which are > easier to work with than any C variant and much more portable between > Operating Systems. > > In the case of PHP, the client app could use JQuery[12] or Dojo[13] > and a modified version of PHP's Simple Spreadsheet[14] (or JQuery > Spreadsheet[15] or Dojo Spreadsheet[16]) and communication between > client/server could use encrypted data over HXP[17], HL7[18], REST [19] > or SOAP[20] (using a similar concept to OpenID[21] with HMAC[22] and > data encryption[23] for instance) to initiate the authentication and > further light peer-to-peer communication. > > Best, > Lopo > > > > Links mentioned above: > > [1] > http://curinghealthcare.blogspot.com/2008/05/interesting-article- about-open-source.html > [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIPAA > [3] http://www.xubuntu.org/ > [4] http://www.puppylinux.org/ > [5] http://www.lighttpd.net/ > [6] http://www.php.net/ > [7] http://www.sqlite.org/ > [8] http://getswiftfox.com/download.htm > [9] http://gtk.php.net/ > [10] http://www.python.org/ > [11] http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ > [12] http://www.jquery.com/ > [13] http://www.dojotoolkit.org/ > [14] http://www.simple-groupware.de/cms/Spreadsheet/Home > [15] http://os.arandomurl.com/jqueryspreadsheet/ > [16] > http://blog.tremend.ro/wp- content/uploads/2006/09/spreadsheet_custom_build/test_spreadsheet.htm > [17] http://hxp.sourceforge.net/ > [18] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HL7 > [19] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REST > [20] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP > [21] http://openid.net/ > [22] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAC > [23] http://lopo.users.phpclasses.org/browse/package/1297.html >
