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J. Antas | 11 Feb 2006 22:57
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WorldVistA 20060113 - A medical EMR/practice management package.

WorldVistA 20060113

About:
  Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture is a
healthcare information system (HIS).

  VistA is widely believed to be the largest integrated HIS in the world.

  It was originally developed and maintained by the U.S. Department of 
Veterans Affairs (VA), based on the systems software architecture and 
implementation methodology developed by the U.S. Public Health Service 
jointly with the National Bureau of Standards.

  It is designed to provide a high-quality medical care environment for 
the country's military veterans. VistA has a proven track record of 
supporting a large variety of clinical settings and medical delivery 
systems.

       License: GNU General Public License (GPL)
   Project URL: http://worldvista.sourceforge.net/
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J. Antas | 3 Feb 2006 12:47
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Wharton's Report: "Unraveling Complexity in Products and Services"

Source URL: http://e-healthexpert.org/whartoncomplexity

*Complexity is a prominent characteristic of any healthcare organization.*

The Wharton School [of Business - Univ. Pennsylvania, USA] just 
published a joint work with the George Group about Complexity in 
Products and Services and how it affects an organization.

In the Wharton tradition that report is clear and concise. Most of the 
problems pointed also show up in our hospitals and healthcare 
organizations and for that reason the report deserves a few minutes of 
you attention.

Taken from the report:
"...three important rules of complexity:
One, eliminate complexity that customers will not pay for;
Two, exploit the complexity customers will pay for;
And three, minimize the costs of complexity you offer."

"Complexity is not easy to recognize, and typically doesn’t raise red 
flags in financial statements. Very few organizations successfully 
capture the costs of complexity in their standard accounting systems
...It’s a bit like pollution, It builds up over time, it’s hard to see, 
but it definitely affects the overall health of the business. It’s a 
systemic issue created by multiple people so no one person is really 
accountable."

You may download the full report in .pdf format from:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=weblink&linkID=175 [1]
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J. Antas | 27 Jan 2006 13:05
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the HIS-PT mailing list Gmane pathway

Thanks to the people at Gmane.org, the access to the [HIS-PT] mailing 
list is now even more convenient.

Messages sent to the [HIS-PT] mailing list are now available in several 
new formats:

* On the web, using frames and threads: 
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.science.health.tech.his-pt

* On the web, using a blog-like, flat interface:
http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.science.health.tech.his-pt

* Using an NNTP newsreader:
nntp server: news.gmane.org
nntp thread: gmane.science.health.tech.his-pt

* RSS feeds*
1. All messages from the list, with excerpted texts:
  http://rss.gmane.org/messages/excerpts/gmane.science.health.tech.his-pt

2. Topics from the list, with excerpted texts:
  http://rss.gmane.org/topics/excerpts/gmane.science.health.tech.his-pt

3. All messages from the list, with complete texts:
http://rss.gmane.org/messages/complete/gmane.science.health.tech.his-pt

4. Topics from the list, with complete texts:
http://rss.gmane.org/topics/complete/gmane.science.health.tech.his-pt

More information at the [HIS-PT] list's Gmane page:
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Ignacio Valdes | 20 Jan 2006 15:36
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Senator Endorses VistA for EHR Standard


In a Hospital Connect editorial, Delaware senator Tom Carper has 
endorsed the Veterans Affairs VistA software as a reference model for 
a national standard EHR: "...Efforts are underway within the federal 
government to ensure that all health care providers will be able to 
use IT in a uniform and secure way. Mike Leavitt, secretary of the 
Department of Health and Human Services, recently announced the 
creation of a new commission charged with devising a set of national 
health IT standards...We don’t need to reinvent the wheel to come up 
with standards that will work...For the past 10 years, the Department 
of Veterans Affairs, the nation’s largest central health care system 
with more than a thousand medical centers, nursing homes and 
outpatient clinic across the country, has been using an EHR with 
amazing results."

http://www.linuxmednews.com/1137769193/index_html
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J. Antas | 19 Jan 2006 10:30
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European Commission's Magazine about Open Source Software (OSS)

European Commission's Magazine about Open Source Software (OSS)

The European Commission's (IDABC) funded "Synergy Magazine", in its 
January 2006 issue, analyzes how European public bodies may benefit from 
OSS.

  Its main actions focus on saving on license costs and potentially on 
administration and development costs. Collaboration, sharing of ideas 
and code also constitute an integral part of it. OSS is a software 
development methodology.

This issue will provide all the useful information for public 
authorities using or considering the use of OSS alongside existing 
proprietary solutions, as well as for their private sector partners.

This magazine is freely available for download at: 
http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/document/5237

The .pdf file: http://europa.eu.int/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=23833
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J. Antas | 15 Jan 2006 00:00
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BIOMAIL: free Medline emailed to you.

Some of you (all?) may already know the Stony Brook's BIOMAIL Medline 
service.

It is a free service based in open source software, hosted by Medical 
Informatics Department of the Stony Brook University Hospital and 
Medical Center of the State University of New York.

It does a daily search of the Medline/PubMed for subjects that you choose.
Once or twice a week, it sends you an email digest with the results and 
the pointers to the latest articles indexed at the Medline.

It is easy to setup, both for the individual user and for institutional 
services, and it certainly is very useful at keeping you with the latest 
published articles.

You may freely subscribe it at: http://www.biomail.org/

J. Antas
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e-HealthExpert.org HelpDesk | 10 Jan 2006 17:48
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e-HealthExpert.org Server Migration Notice - 1st warning

Dear e-HealthExpert.org community members,

In an effort to offer you better performance and stability, we will be
migrating all our software and databases to a new server at a new 
datacenter.
The new server will have better hardware to support better data 
integrity, better performance and greater reliability.

The migration date is planned for Wednesday January 18, 2005.

For that reason the e-HealthExpert.org sponsored web sites and 
supporting services (including the e-mail and e-learning services) will 
be unavailable for a 24 hour period, starting around 00H00 January 18, 2005

If all goes as expected, we will be back at 00H00 January 19, 2005

Regards,
The e-HealthExpert.org Managing Team.
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J. Antas | 10 Jan 2006 11:58
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How To set up a Windows Server using only Ubuntu Linux

A series of detailed online tutorials are being published explaining how 
to configure a Ubuntu-based server to act as file-and-print server for 
Windows workstations.

The first tutorial by Till Brehm, is suitable for workgroups for up to 
250 users and is easier to set up than an LDAP backend. This howto 
tutorial is based in Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) and utilizes the tdb 
backend for Samba to store passwords and account information.

A second howto covering the installation of LDAP and Samba will be 
published soon.

To install such a system, you will also need the following:
     * A Ubuntu install CD, freely available from: 
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/
     * An Internet connection, because the author describes a network 
installation in the tutorial

The full tutorial is available from: 
http://www.howtoforge.com/samba_setup_ubuntu_5.10

J. Antas
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Ignacio Valdes | 9 Jan 2006 15:37
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VistA in Egypt, an Interview with Omar H. El Hattab


Dr. Omar El Hattab was a Cancer Epidemiologist at the National Cancer 
Institute, Cairo University, Egypt. He was responsible for getting 
DHCP (the precursor to VistA) installed at his cancer institutes. In 
order to help Linux Medical News readers understand the challenges he 
faced in setting up the software in Arabic and English we present the 
following interview. "VistA is a comprehensive system that is tested 
and functioning. It is open source and that allowed us to make 
modifications on the code that was needed for Arabization. Also to 
modify the applications to the way things are done in Egypt and to the 
way our physicians do their work...many experts in the medical field 
shared in the development of the software (VistA), so it fits very 
well the work and the high standards of medical profession."

Complete interview available at: 
http://www.linuxmednews.com/1136668574/index_html
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J. Antas | 8 Jan 2006 12:37
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Are you ready for the Six Sigma Practices at the Healthcare Industry?

  Published on e-HealthExpert.org (http://e-healthexpert.org)
Are you ready for the Six Sigma Practices at the Healthcare Industry?
By J. Antas
Created 2006-01-08 11:04

The "Healthcare Informatics" magazine, January 2006 issue cover story is 
about Six Sigma Practices for the Healthcare Industry.

Six Sigma is a process-improvement methodology that is highly 
data-driven, and highly focused on achieving very specific, 
data-documented efficiency improvements, cost savings, and customer 
satisfaction enhancements.

It seems that executives at hospitals and health plans who have led Six 
Sigma initiatives are proud of the process changes and cost savings it 
has brought. They seem to love Six Sigma's focus on the bottom line and 
quantifiable results.

It is believed that the Six Sigma work can bring important benefits in 
healthcare for at least three substantial reasons:

     * The funding for improvement projects at healthcare organizations 
is limited, so when one is undertaken, senior executives are demanding 
increasingly solid ROI--a strong orientation of Six Sigma.
     * The complexity of healthcare processes requires objective data as 
the foundation of any improvement-driven activity.
     * The rigorousness of Six Sigma work is particularly appropriate 
for the rather unorganized delivery of care and management of business 
operations in healthcare.
(Continue reading)

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David Forslund | 6 Jan 2006 18:53
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Re: US Government declares twenty Health IT Standards.

As I said in my earlier email, there is nothing new in this 
"announcement".  I'm not sure why the Bush administration is brought up 
in this context other than that this effort part of a large e-government 
initiative going on for a number of years .  This is mostly work by the 
CHI that has been going on for quite awhile (since 2001) in an effort to 
help guide interoperability in US health care and to coordinate 
government efforts in this area.   All this is clearly stated in the 
Federal Register article.   These 20 standards have been recommended 
since 2004 and has been part of a very deliberative process with 
standards bodies and industry.  I've suggested some other areas that CHI 
should look at but they seem reluctant to take my suggestions (should I 
say my ideas are irrelevant?).

Dave
J. Antas wrote:
> Ignacio Valdes wrote:
>> Hi J, the link to the doc on your website seems to not do anything. 
>> This is not a comment on the federal government :-)
>
> Well, it was unintentional.
> It seems that the US Gov. does not like to be linked to. :-)
>
> Thanks for the warning, the final lines of that message have been 
> changed to:
>   "The list may be freely downloaded from the US Gov. Printing Office.
> (The e-HealthExpert.org members will have to log into the 
> e-HealthExpert.org site to be able to download a copy by following the 
> "attachment"/"fr23de05-78.pdf" link presented bellow these lines.)"
>
> While we are at it and because English is not our mother language, are
(Continue reading)

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