last update : October 2009

Membership

The EFMI Working Group LIFOSS membership is open to everyone who agrees to the WG's objectives, tries to actively participate and references to the WG whenever applicable.

For the enhancement of the communication between the members the EFMI LIFOSS WG now has a established a Google Group account.
If you would like to become a member you are kindly invited to register to this group (http://groups.google.com/group/efmi-lifoss-wg)

Objectives:
1. to help replicate the success of free/libre and open source projects in the health informatics domain, in particular those within education, research, clinical practice and administration
2. to build a repository of knowledge about free/libre and open source developments of relevance to the health informatics domain
3. to develop an Open Source Market Place
4. to develop a website for the WG
5. to explore the implications of digital rights management, digital signatures, copyright and intellectual property issues
6. to develop the epistemological democracy leading to research publications
7. to liaise with and explore implications of EUROREC

The EFMI LIFOSS WG aims to promote:
1. evaluation of free/libre and open source materials and approaches
2. exploration and development of open standards
3. use of free/libre and open source systems, and knowledge transfer about these systems
4. a European focus, including activities aimed at, but not exclusive to, the European Union

Recent Activities:
The EFMI LIFOSS WG organised a workshop at Med-e-Tel 2009 in Luxembourg.

Thomas Karopka gave a talk about FLOSS in health care at the Open World Forum in Paris (http://www.openworldforum.org) 1-2 October 2009: "FLOSS in health care (FLOSS-HC): Ready for the next Kondratieff cycle?"

The WG was established in 2006 and held an inaugural workshop at MIE2006 in Maastricht. At this workshop, it was agreed that the scope of the WG should consider not just free/libre and open source software, but also open knowledge and open standards (including open document formats), as well as related issues (eg Digital Rights/Restrictions Management). In particular, the WG will target the use of libre/free and open software and approaches within education, research, clinical practice and administration.

The members of the WG have a range of interests, including advocacy and promotional work, as well as projects that have specific aims, including the development and the promotion of evaluation documents of case studies into free/libre and open source software in the health and health informatics domain, and/or case studies from wider afield that could be applied. Several members will be working to develop specific projects, for example Etienne Saliez spoke of the Open Source Market Place (in healthcare), which aims to stimulate contact between users of ideas ('dreams') and open source developers who are looking for specific projects and guidelines.

Future activities:
In conjunction with the 3rd International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - BIOSTEC 2010 and the IMIA OS WG the EFMI LIFOSS WG organizes the 2nd International Workshop on Open Source in European Health Care: Crossing the Borders - OSEHC 2010 (http://www.biostec.org/OSEHC.htm) For more information please visit the workshop website. International Workshop on eHealth in Emerging Economies (IWEEE) (http://www.iweee.org), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, 10th -12th of February 2010
The EFMI LIFOSS WG is one of the coorganizers of IWEEE. IWEEE addresses a multi-disciplinary team of scientists, engineers, medical doctors, nurses, social workers, religious, politicians and Non-Government Organisations from different countries that share their experiences in emerging societies.
IWEEE is not a pure technical conference. On the contrary, it will focus on the human factor. There will be presentations that will talk about specific solutions (such as Hospital Information Systems), but from the experience point of view. Rather than concentrating on the algorithm or programming language, the solutions will be shown from the human perspective. In other words : How does the doctor interacts with the system, what were the main barriers and what are the future challenges and, finally, how much the particular village, city or country benefit from it.

EFMI LIFOSS WG will organise a FLOSS in health care(FLOSS-HC) track at Med-e-Tel 2010, 14 -16 April, Luxembourg
A preliminary program will be posted on the EFMI portal and on the Med-e-Tel website (http://www.medetel.lu) at the end of October 2009.

Chair:
Thomas Karopka
IT Science Center Rügen gGmbH
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IT Science Center Rügen gGmbH