Past Events

This year, the 3rd Annual Health Data Initiative Forum will take place at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., June 5-6. This event, also known as Health Datapalooza 2012, “promises to bring together a diverse group of data experts, technology developers, entrepreneurs, policy makers, health care system leaders, and community advocates to support innovative applications of health and health care data.”

Todd Park, United States Chief Technology Officer and keynote speaker at this year's Health Data Consortium, described the program as an excellent opportunity to explore the “intersection of data and health care improvement,” including many new innovations developed through open health data. The 2012 program will focus on the Consumer e-Health Program erected last fall by the ONC and, as always, will showcase a Data & Apps Expo with breakout sessions and panels. The event, also a national competition designed to highlight new and high-quality health-related apps and services, features the “latest, cutting-edge” technologies brought to the fore by approximately 75 exhibitors.

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On Wednesday, May 30, 2012, the the Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) and the National Security Agency (NSA) will co-host an Open Source Software Industry Day to be held at the Johns Hopkins University APL Kossiakoff Conference Center in Laurel, Maryland.

The event will feature speakers from the NSA as well as industry and open source development community experts. Currently, there are more than 30 breakout sessions scheduled to address issues of technology development, collaboration, security, use and maintenance of open source software in the areas of information assurance and security practices, embedded and mobile systems, cloud sourcing and large-data distribution, system analytics and bidirectional technology transfer.

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On May 22-23, the Military Healthcare Conference will be held in Washington, D.C.: “This outstanding conference brings together the key players and organizations who are shaping the future MHS. They will provide a comprehensive analysis of OSD and Service healthcare strategies, plans, challenges and opportunities.” Read More »

Open Source Business Conference - OSBC 2012 offers the chance to connect with the developers, users and companies behind the most significant open-source, mobile and cloud technologies, including HTML5 frameworks like jQuery and SproutCore, NoSQL databases like Mongo, Big Data technologies like Hadoop and Cassandra, and cloud platforms like OpenStack and Cloud Foundry.  You'll also learn k Read More »

MAKE's Hardware Innovation Workshop takes place May 15-16, at PARC in Palo Alto. The Workshop is a one-and-a-half day intensive introduction to the business of making and the makers who are creating these businesses.

Here are some of the topics we'll be discussing:

• Open source hardware and software are providing standardized components on which to build new applications.
• New fabrication tools are creating a rapid-prototyping revolution that makes iteration cheaper, faster, and easier.
• Collaborative design practices are using new tools and tapping new kinds of expertise.
• Options for manufacturing at scale are improving, as more and more of the process becomes automated.
• Crowdfunding is helping launch new projects and providing funding to test out new product ideas.
• Traditional investors are wary of hardware, but hardware-focused incubators hope to soften resistance by helping hardware startups become better prepared for investors.

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On May 14-15, the Defense Strategies Institute (DSI) will present its 2012 DoD/VA iEHR and HIE (Interoperable Electronic Health Record  and Health Information Exchange) Summit. The conference will focus on the interconnectedness across and among DoD, VA and Federal agencies...

May 2012 Preview of Subject Matter Includes:

• Understanding DoD/VA IPO Governance
• Being Successful with Open Source
• Business Operations of the iEHR and the IPO
• Being Successful with Data Sharing Between Federal /State/National and Commercial Entities
• VLER Governance: How iEHRs fit into the VLER...

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Tom Munnecke, one of the original pioneers of VistA will discuss the evolution of the VistA architecture since 1978. He will examine what was successful, and then examine how we might extend VistA's future evolution. This webinar promises to be one of the most interesting webinars in the series.

In Munnecke's own words, "in my foray into humanitarian applications of technology, I learned about a approach called "Positive deviance."  Basically, it consists of observing what is working in a giving situation, and then doing more of it.  Simple, but effective. Applying this to VistA and the future of Health IT, the question becomes, "what worked in VistA?"  and "How do we do more of it?" In the webinar, I'll talk a bit about some lessons learned in reviewing the VA Loma Linda/March AFB test, and then open things up for an interactive discussion. 

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Funding a proprietary healthcare IT system with all the hidden costs can break your organization.  Good news: you have options.

Take control of your healthcare IT system and your total cost of ownership -- the true cost of your system. Join Roger A. Maduro, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of OpenHealth News for an Executive Roundtable about the REAL total cost of implementing a proprietary healthcare IT system in contrast with a cost effective open source approach.

Learn from health IT leadership at a HIMSS Analytics Stage 6 hospital and a county hospital about why they chose an open source system and saved millions versus proprietary "lock-in" EHRs. Hospitals like Midland Memorial and Cooper Green have affordably improved patient care thanks to the cost-effectiveness of OpenVista, an open source healthcare IT platform derived from VistA – the most widely used hospital-based EHR in the world.

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