OSEHRA 2019 Summit in Washington to Examine Next Steps for Open Health

Roger A. MaduroThe Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance (OSEHRA) will be holding its 8th Annual Open Source Summit from Tuesday, July 9 through Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, just north of Washington, D.C. The theme of this year's two-day Summit is "Open SaaS - Open Source in the Cloud," this year's two-day Summit will showcase leading-edge, open source initiatives and highlight the increasing level of public-private partnership in major programs and agencies.

Open source software has become key to both implementation and interoperability as more and more programs opt for cloud-based solutions and software-as-a-service delivery models. This Summit will address ways to optimize open source utilization and community involvement in this new playing field.

The OSEHRA Summit will go into great depth on many of the "open solutions" and "open technologies" that are being adopted by the healthcare industry. As we reported in our Open Health Guide to HIMSS19 post, more than 75% of the presentations and sessions at the recent HIMSS 2019 conference in Orlando, Florida, were based on solutions that leveraged open source and open technologies.

As it has done in previous Summits, the 2019 OSEHRA Summit will feature in-depth presentations on major topics as well as a highly interactive discussion between the audience and leading experts. The Summit combines the presentations and sessions with meals and the reception. With most of the speakers participating in the whole conference it is a unique opportunity for the members of the audience to have personal discussions.

The first day of the Summit features major strategic discussions centered around the future of the VistA and RPMS open source EHRs, as well as the emergence of open Cloud solutions and interoperability.

The second day of the Summit will feature 30 sessions and roundtable discussions. The sessions will feature a demonstration by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Agency (SAMHSA) of their state-of-the-art open source software package, Omnibus Care Plan (OCP). Additional sessions will feature leading-edge topics including the Synthetic Patient Data project, Open Source Ecosystems, Open Source APIs and Standards, Machine Learning and Analytics, Imaging and Analytics, and Innovation with VistA.

The themes for the plenary sessions include:

• VistA in Transition - Government Perspective
• VistA in Transition - Industry Perspective
• Preparing for Transition - The HHS/IHS Health Information Technology Modernization Research Project
• Federal Open Source Progress and Challenges
• Care Without Boundaries - Government & Private Sector Interoperability
• Care Without Boundaries - An Industry Solution to Interoperability

Plenary Panel Presenters and Moderators

• James B. Peake, MD, LTG (ret.), Chairman Emeritus, Board of Directors, OSEHRA
• Seong K. Mun, PhD, President and CEO, OSEHRA
• Aaron Barth, Cloud Solution Architect, Microsoft
• Aaron Drew, PhD, Chief Engineer & Chief Architect of Enterprise Supply Chain Modernization Program, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
• Andrew Heibel, Information Systems Security Engineer, Lead, WALKOFF, National Security Agency (Invited)
• Ben Cushing, Field CTO, Federal Health, Red Hat
• Bo Dagnall, Chief Technologist and Strategist, Provider Segment - VA, DHA, Digital Health, Perspecta
• Chad Wach, Principal Azure Specialist, Microsoft
• Charles Jaffe, MD, PhD, CEO, Health Level 7 International
• Eddie Brito, Commercial Portfolio Manager, DSS, Inc.
• Eduardo Ortiz, Partner, Product, & Partners
• George Rollins, Member, Board of Directors, OSEHRA
• Harry G. Greenspun, MD, Partner and Chief Medical Officer, Guidehouse
• Joel Kupersmith, MD, Member, Board of Directors, OSEHRA
• Jonathan Nebeker, MD, Acting National CMIO, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, VHA
• Ken Rubin, Director, Standards and Interoperability, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
• Laura Beaufort, Technical Lead, Federal Election Commission (Invited)
• Maia Laing, Senior Consultant, Office of the Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• Prentice Norman, Lead Engineer, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, DHS
• Ricardo Reyes, Former Open Source Director of Code.gov
• Robert Missroon, Member, Board of Directors, OSEHRA
• Robert Wah, MD, Co-Chair, Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC)
• Roger Baker, Member, Board of Directors, OSEHRA
• Shane McNamee, MD, CMIO, Perspecta
• Theresa Cullen, MD, Associate Director, Global Health Informatics, Regenstrief Institute, Inc.
• Thomas Pole, Enterprise Architect, DSS, Inc.

The Summit will include an Exhibit Hall with featured Sponsors and some of the biggest names in open source products and health IT innovations, including:

• Perspecta
• DSS, Inc.
• YottaDB LLC
• BookZurman
• Oroville Hospital
• Kitware
• PatchAdvisor.