OSEHRA 2016 Summit to Address Global Open Health IT Issues as well as the Future of VistA, eHMP and the VA's Veteran's Centric Strategy

Seong K. Mun, PhDThe 2016 OSEHRA Summit to be held June 27-29 is sixty days away, and we are very excited about the way it has come together. You can view the full agenda online, as well as additional information about the event. I would like to thank DSS Inc., our Conference Sponsor, our Program Committee, and the entire community for their efforts! Together we have developed a terrific program with approximately 100 presentations, posters, and exhibits. The program reflects the success of the  OSEHRA community on many fronts, and it is a great example of community collaboration!

We will open the Summit on Monday afternoon with the Global Open Health Informatics Workshop. There we will hear about the progress of many programs, including those in India, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Slovenia and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. This workshop will also address technical issues supporting the global deployment of open source EHRs.

The opening Plenary Session on Tuesday has presentations by leaders in health informatics and the open source industry. Warren Kibbe of the National Cancer Institute will speak from the perspective of a leading health informatics organization about how the Precision Medicine Initiative could change that discipline in the future. Mike Tiemann of Red Hat, one of the most successful and respected leaders in open source markets, will talk about how they leverage rapid innovations by the open source community to produce exceptional products. 

Last year Secretary Bob McDonald spoke about his vision of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as a Veteran-centric organization. This year, senior representatives of the Veterans Health Administration and the Office of Information and Technology will discuss the programs that VA is implementing to fulfill the Secretary’s vision in the areas of healthcare and health informatics.

This year’s breakout sessions span Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, and they cover a wide array of health IT issues of development, applications, and community engagement.  They include special focus sessions on interoperability and cybersecurity.   A number of these sessions will be chaired by senior executives from VA.  We will also have our Summit Reception on Tuesday evening, which will feature poster presentations and provide ample networking opportunities.

In past years, our “Town Hall” style sessions have consistently been among the most popular, with open and often passionate dialogue.  This year, we are hosting two Technical Town Halls:  one on VA’s Enterprise Health Management Platform (eHMP), and one on the Future State of VistA.

• The eHMP Town Hall will be a high point of this year’s meeting.  Last year the community applauded VA leadership in developing eHMP. This year we will see the great progress eHMP has made, including community-facing innovation such as test sites on which to try out compatible applications.
• The Future State of VistA session will focus on technical issues and strategies for current and coming years. Presenters and participants will explore and discuss the role of the open source community in exploiting the full potential of VistA as a community-based, state-of-the-art system.

The program will close Wednesday afternoon with what has become a tradition for the OSEHRA Summit— a panel discussion by VA leadership covering a wide range of topics, with a focus on how to make VA’s IT more Veteran-centric.

Sponsorship and Exhibitor opportunities are still available, and I encourage you to use the Summit as a venue to highlight your expertise.  Please join us by registering today to experience the open source movement at its best!