OSEHRA 2015: Preliminary Agenda Open Source Summit Released

Seong K. Mun, PhDThe 2015 Open Source Summit: Community-Powered Healthcare IT Solutions is shaping up to be another exciting event that will showcase the remarkable achievements of our growing community!  The Summit offers a unique perspective on healthcare IT innovation in the U.S. and global markets, as well as an opportunity to network with the individuals and companies who are making it happen.

Conference Sponsor DSS, Inc. has been instrumental in driving a stellar program.  Plenary sessions include presenters from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the State of Wyoming— covering topics such as evolving policy, recent innovations, analytics, population health, and payment reform.  This year, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan will describe its rollout of VistA, an initiative through which Jordan has embraced an open source strategy to deploy a robust and cost-effective national EHR.

Further, the OSEHRA community is expanding beyond its VistA-centric origins. This year, in collaboration with Open Health News, a diverse panel of open source community leaders has been formed to exchange ideas, expertise, and business opportunities.  For the first time, the Summit also welcomes the population health analytics community with an expansive program of presentations, roundtables, and workshop style meetings, including a dedicated analytics track.

Last year’s highly acclaimed VistA Town Hall will return by popular demand.  The VISTA Expertise Network will again chair this discussion, covering current technical issues and VistA modernization strategy.  In addition, a number of roundtables and in-depth discussions will address key topics within VistA Evolution, including a “deep dive” on the Enterprise Health Management Platform (eHMP) software development kit.

Finally, a number of OSEHRA Community workgroups will report progress in activities such as:

• Best practices in intellectual property management and open source licensing;
• The forthcoming release of OSEHRA VistA 1.0 and the associated OSEHRA FORUM patch management system, a result of collaborative development efforts by the Code Convergence Work Group and supporting OSEHRA activities;
• Successful completion by the Immunization Work Group of VIMM 1.0, which accommodated code convergence with the Indian Health Service, and the incorporation of open source clinical decision support tools in support of the VIMM 2.0 project; and
• Completion of collaborative effort by the popHealth® Open Source Project Group to converge forked versions of popHealth software in support of State-level use cases.

Our 4th Annual Summit would not be possible without the support of our current Sponsors, and we would like to thank them for their dedication to OSEHRA and the open source community:

• Conference Sponsor: DSS, Inc.
• Gold Sponsor: InterSystems Corporation
• Silver Sponsor: PwC
• WiFi Sponsor: GT.M
• Exhibitor: Kitware, Inc.
• Exhibitor: KRM Associates, Inc.
• Exhibitor: MSTI, Inc.
• Advertiser: Technatomy
• Advertiser: BITS, Inc.

Sponsorship and Exhibitor opportunities are still available, ranging from $250 Advertisements to the $25,000 Platinum Level.  Early Bird Registration is offered until May 31, so we encourage you to review the online agenda and register soon.

Do not miss this unique opportunity to help shape the future of healthcare information technology! We look forward to seeing you July 29-31, 2015, at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center just outside of Washington, D.C.