Ohio LinuxFest 2011 Features Medical Track

Ohio LinuxFest, one of the largest and best attended Linux and Open Source conferences in the U.S., will feature a Medical Track for the first time this year. The track will present a whole range of major developments in the open health community. Ohio LinuxFest (OLF) is an annual grassroots conference for the  Open Source community. Organized and run by volunteers, it will be held this year from September 9-11 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio. The conference includes an expo area for companies and open source software organizations to set up booths.

The conference will include an Open Source Medical Track from 11 AM to 5 PM on Friday, September 9, featuring talks from noted authors, bloggers, and speakers such as Samuel Bowen, Dan Paoletti, and Ruth Suehle.

• Susan Rose, who just completed a 25-year nursing career at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, will deliver a series of mini talks on various topics in the first hour and a half. She will talk about the highlights of the medical elements of the Computer Electronics Show, present a collaboration with Andrew Barbash, MD on open-source communications software for healthcare professionals, and give a practical demonstration of how the VA's open source VistA Electronic Health Record (EHR) platform works. She will also review how to obtain free training in health information technology through the VA's online Veterans eHealth University.
• Adam Goode, a site reliability engineer at Google, will give a presentation in which he explains digital pathology and demonstrates his software, OpenSlide, which is an open-source C library alternative to proprietary microscopy software.
• Samuel Bowen, MD, will discuss the project management processes he and others used to create OpenEMR (and what they learned from failure), and the challenges in getting FOSS software certified for meaningful use and making it competitive against proprietary software in the eyes of providers who are used to using expensive, closed systems. OpenEMR 4.1 has just received full 'meaningful use' certification as an ambulatory EMR. This is a major milestone, details of which can be found in this article from Open Health News.
• Dan Paoletti, Interim CEO at Ohio Health Information Partnership, will talk about the future of the meaningful use of health IT, paying special attention to EMRs and interoperability of clinical data shared between providers, clinics, and hospitals.
• Ruth Suehle, senior editor of opensource.com, will give a general talk about the current excitement in open-source health initiatives, from social integration to transparency and mobility.

Alongside the medical track and simultaneous OLF Institute classes, OLF will feature a general Linux track (presentations on game-writing, how to show Linux in a positive light, and the philosophy of freedom common to Linux endeavors), an Ubuntu track, and a Cloud Community day (pre-registration is required for the cloud track).

Saturday has two keynote speeches and four general tracks on topics from media to business to security to education. Read more about them here. OLF will close on Sunday with a workshop on diversity in open source from 11 AM to 3 PM and a set of LPI and BSDA certification exams from 11 AM to 5 PM.

The conference is free for anyone to attend, though its volunteer staff members ask for donations to the 501(c)(3) organization in the form of “Supporter” or “Professional” tier passes ($65 and $350, respectively). The higher-tier passes include, in addition to conference and expo access, a t-shirt and meal tickets, and the “Professional” pass grants access to OLF Institute classes on a variety of topics.

For more information on Ohio LinuxFest click here.