Hello Fred and Dr. Valdes, First of all please accept my personal congratulations to you and your team members on the establishment of the Liberty Health Software Foundation as well as upon receiving the 501(c)3 status! It is indeed a wonderful evolution of an initiative dedicated to the Free Libre Software within the Health Care and Informatics community. I wish you the organization continued growth and success.
You have indeed put forth an interesting list of questions and answers. Regarding the revenue stream to conduct business as usual and keep the social enterprise sustainable, I see the following avenues of considerable importance and growth: 1. Training Programs - Both Paid and Sponsored 2. Healthcare Information Systems Certification programs and in this case can be Basic, Intermediate and Advanced User Certs 3. A professional network that runs Liberty Health Software Conferences and Seminars for the masses around the 50 states as well as in Canada and other countries where you would like to expand out to. 4. The training manual is a good idea but I see the need for a book or a number of books on Free & Open Source Software in Health Care and FOSS Health Care Information Systems. You can produce these books and distribute them under Creative Commons free for online download where as print and sell them through www.lulu.com. 5. There is no harm in maintaining a community of FOSS developers at the foundation virtually or physically. Software Bundles with Support options. You can provide software free but charge for the following: a. Software Bundles with personal support US$250, group support US$500, clinical support US$1000, large clinic support US$5000, Small Scale Hospital Support US$10,000, Medium Scale Hospital Support US$50,000 and Enterprise Scale Hospital Support US$1-500,000 plans. b. Consulting Plans c. Training Plans d. Maintenance Plans e. Remote Support Plans f. Customized Development Plans 6. I would also recommend you to apply for a grant to the Rockefeller Foundation as they are still supporting numerous FOSS programs and organizations. 7. I would recommend you to float CCHIT development on Google Summer of Code and other FOSS Initiatives. 8. Partnership with universities, especially medical healthcare capacity development or academic centres to offer certificate trainings. 9. In the end, you need a strong marketing plan, every social enterprise needs it and so do you so that the world knows you exist and you add value to the social and economic systems either in the US or abroad. 10. Get working on public relations, use means such as google adwords, facebook and linked in. Get the show rolling! I hope these ideas will be useful and I am always available for joining the foundation in strategy support etc. Btw, this me just in case: http://satc.pk/?q=node/14 -- Regards. -------------------------- Fouad Bajwa FOSS Advocate (South Asia) @skBajwa Answering all your technology questions http://www.askbajwa.com http://twitter.com/fouadbajwa On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 3:33 AM, fred trotter <fred.trot...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > FOSS Community, > > I am writing to let you know that Liberty Health Software > Foundation has received 501c3 status. > Dr. Valdes and I have been working on this for over two years and we are > ready to present this to the community-at-large. > > The purpose of Liberty Health Software Foundation (LibertyHSF) is to improve > the delivery and science of healthcare by supporting the development and use > of Free/Libre Healthcare Software. > > We are in a unique position with the organization because we want to both be > careful with how we set things up for long term sustainability, as well as > getting some critical tasks done now. I wish this email were somewhat more > organized, but as it stands it is just several lists of directions that we > want to take as well as open questions about a slew of issues. Feel free to > email me privately or call me to discuss anything that you would prefer to > remain outside the public forum. I am and will remain baised towards those > who have contributed towards our community, I will listen to everyone, but I > will act based on the opinions of those who have sacrificed for our > movement. > > OPEN QUESTION? > How do we choose a BOD? > > OPEN QUESTION? > We want a mix of FOSS corporate and FOSS community interests. Sometimes what > our successful FOSS companies do is in the interests of the FOSS developer > and user interests and sometimes it is not? Our community has several > non-vendor roles: deployers, which include IT specialist who deploy FOSS, > clinical users, developers and finally the consumers who have their health > data stored in FOSS systems. How do we balance community and vendor > interests? > > OPEN QUESTION? > We want to include and embrace hybrid FOSS/proprietary companies like Mysis, > ECW and DSS but still acknowledge that at least part of their interests are > to support proprietary software. How do we strike a balance of encouraging > the risks that these hybrid companies are taking, but still remaining true > to the FOSS values? > > Liberty HSF goal: Certification: Create a certification system compatible > with FOSS > -> Current plan: work with CCHIT to become the scholarship > organization for CCHIT certification, and to make CCHIT have a reasonable > cert option for FOSS > -> Backup plan: become an FOSS oriented CCHIT alternative > > OPEN QUESTION? > How do we deal with CCHIT as an organization AND as a community of > independent thinkers? > > OPEN QUESTION? > When do we decide that we need to 'fork' CCHIT and setup an alternative > certification system? > > Liberty HSF goal: Vendor organization: be a FOSS EHRVA (this is what we are > talking about here) > -> Represent FOSS Vendors the way that EHRVA claims to and > HIMSS pretends it does not. > -> Lobby (in compliance with the rules for 501c3) for FOSS > vendor interests > -> Create our own definition of 'meaningful use' to through > into the mix > > OPEN QUESTION? > We need to give a vehicle the FOSS vendors to express their views, as > distinct from the community. Vendor profitability is critical to our > community, we need FOSS vendors to form the backbone of our community. How > do we carve out a space for vendors specifically, while ensuring that the > overall purpose of Liberty HSF to represent every member of our community is > not damaged? > > -> Community Organization: be a FOSS HIMSS > -> Create and back FOSS conferences (like DOCHS and > FOSSHEALTH) > > OPEN QUESTION? > How do we run better conferences and meetings so that eventually we can > compete with HIMSS? > > -> Development organization: be a FOSS RWJ > -> Fund and/or internally develop FOSS solutions that are > 'orphan', the kind of projects that are not clearly profitable, but are > still useful. > -> Like documentation? > -> Like user manuals? > -> Like toolkits? > -> Like services that the community needs, like > CA services etc etc > > OPEN QUESTION? > How do we tell the difference between projects that need extra development > dollars and coders, and those that are largely self-sufficient? How do we > choose what projects to support? To a great extent, this will have to be > determined by those who donate either time or money? > > OPEN QUESTION? > How do we interact with other organizations like Open Health Tools and > WorldVistA? > > My plan so far: > > The following seems obviously true and represents 'already made' decisions. > > - We need to move away from me as benevolent dictator of this > organization quickly, to establish credibility. But a full BOD should be > something that the community has input on, we should have general > nominations etc etc. So Dr. Valdes, David Whitten and I will appoint an > arbitrary interim BOD (announced soon) which will allow us to move quickly > and take our time thinking about the BOD issue long term. > - No one is going to have tons of time for this, and there need to be > sub-groupings of LibertyHSF for different purposes, sub-groups should have > latitude to take positions for LibertyHSF on particular issues. These should > take the form of small committees. > - Obvious initial groups include: > - A vendor association committee, made up of representatives of FOSS and > Hybrid vendors in order to establish strictly vendor positions. A critical > first question for this group will be how does the FOSS community define > 'meaningful use'? > - A certification committee who will take over my role as chief > negotiator with CCHIT and determine when and if LibertyHSF needs to become a > certifying body. > - Conferences and Development committees are equally important, but as we > have no general funds for development yet that is a non-issue, and the > conferences are already happening without LibertyHSF so these can wait. > > My short-term priorities are to create grass roots lobbying during this > politically critical time and to sort out the certification issue ASAP. > Should I have other very-short term priorities? > > Long term my priorities for LibertyHSF are: > to create an formal meeting place for the vendors in the industry that > represents them towards governments, > to sponsor important development that is not particularly 'profitable' > (assuming vendors will sponsor profitable development), like documentation, > or helpful libraries. > to create a conference or series of conferences that become the central > meeting point(s) for our community > to increase between project collaboration > to educate clinicians about software freedom > to lobby in support of FOSS in healthcare > to encourage the use of FOSS in health academia > to collaboratively develop standards/position documents when no other > existing organization can/will address the issue > to apply for grants for development funds > to provide education for the implications of FOSS licensing in healthcare > to provide a trusted third party for devisive community issues > to make health databases and health data services available in a FOSS > compatible fashion, (like a FOSS drug database) > to encourage proprietary health software vendors to become hybrid or purse > FOSS software vendors > to remain neutral to particular projects but still recognizing the relevance > of a user base (i.e. no preference between Canonical and Redhat but still > recognize that GNU/Linux is more relevant than FreeDOS) > to make LibertyHSF -our- organization and not just -my- organization... to > that end: > > What long term and short term priorities am I missing? What does the > community want and need from this organization? > > -- > Fred Trotter > http://www.fredtrotter.com > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > >
