News and Events

MOSS Gives Medical Data-Sharing a Dose of Open Source. Misys Open Source Software says its Connect Exchange application was successfully tested at the Chicago IHE Connectathon, paving the way for an open source, standards-based platform for exchanging health info. Such a platform could represent an important step in moving medical data away from paper records and toward digital files. The full news release is available here.

Defining 'open source' addressed at VistA meeting.

Misys Open Source Solutions ("MOSS") Demonstrates Leadership – Successfully Tests the World's First Fully Open Source, Standards-Based Health Information Exchange (HIE) Software Solution Platform. The full news release is available here.

DSS, Inc. Launches Community-driven, Web-based Collaboration Environment to Promote Use and Knowledge of Open Source VistA EHRs Hospitals, community health organizations, practices and other healthcare entities to benefit from VistA forums featuring best practice discussions and posts by thought leaders. The full news release is available here.

Robert Kolodner Robert Kolodner, the former head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, says he has joined the open-source healthcare information technology community as Chief Health Informatics Officer of Open Health Tools. The complete story is available at modernhealthcare.com.

Quebec City, June 1, 2009 - NexJ Systems Inc., a leading provider of innovative customer-centric enterprise solutions, today announces the launch of the NexJ eHealth Suite, a set of robust, scalable platforms for deploying people-centred health solutions. The full news release is available here.

Oracle Corp. will acquire Sun Microsystems Inc. in a $7.4 billion deal that includes the assumption of about $1.8 billion in Sun debt. The acquisition, expected to close this summer, has ramifications for the health care industry where both companies have been targeting more opportunities. Both organizations also sponsor initiatives to expand the use of open source software in health care. Oracle is a founding member of Open Health Tools Inc., created a year ago. It is based on the model of the Eclipse Foundation, which is an open source community of developers who provide software components that others can use to build software products. Read full article here.

OMG, Health Level Seven (HL7), Open Health Tools and the SOA Consortium today announced that Lynn Vogel, Ph.D., Vice-President and CIO, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, will be a featured business track speaker and Ron Schmelzer, Managing Partner, ZapThink, will be moderating a panel session at the SOA in Healthcare: Value in a Time of Change, conference. The conference will be held June 2-4, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare in Chicago, IL. Registration details may be found online at www.omg.org. Read full article here.

February 5 2009 - Google & IBM have announced a new health initiative that empowers people who use Google Health to automatically stream data from medical devices -- such as those used to monitor glucose levels and blood pressure -- into their personal online health records. The enabling technology that allows patients to instantly exchange the data with their doctors or other authorized parties in real time is based in part on open-source software available now from Eclipse and Open Health Tools, two open-source communities dedicated to supporting advancements in health care. Details of this announcement can be found here.

Misys announces Server-side Components for Health Information Exchange.
Misys Open Source Solutions, a division of Misys plc, announced they will work within the open source community to build server-side components for the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) profiles. This technology is required to build standards-based Health Information Exchanges (HIEs). The project is expected to dramatically drive down the cost of interoperability components which have contributed to significant cost barriers for the HIEs in their development of standards-based solutions. The first deliverable will address the IHE profiles for patient identifier cross-referencing (PIX) and patient demographics query (PDQ). The plan calls for an operable beta version in February 2009. Read the full article here.

DSS, Inc. Announces Open Source Version of vxVistA EHR Framework, Joins Open Health Tools Foundation.
DSS, Inc. has announced that its vxVistA product a Veterans Affairs VistA distribution that is CCHIT certified will now be open source under the Eclipse Public License (clarification: the EPL'ed version will not be CCHIT certified although they will share much of the same code): "DSS, Inc. the leading developer of enhancements to VistA, the VA's award winning electronic health record, announced it will open source the code for its vxVista(R) an enhanced version of VistA designed for the commercial market. In this major development, DSS, Inc. has effectively removed the greatest obstacle to collaboration in the VistA community by providing their enhanced version of VistA under a commercially friendly open source license that can be used to unite the VistA community... Mark Byers, President and CEO of DSS, Inc., said that vxVistA(R) is being released as open source software at a critical time in this country's history. Byers stated, 'the health care crisis is one of the major challenges facing this country," adding that "VistA deployments in the private sector have demonstrated that VistA can provide private hospitals and clinics with the highest quality Electronic Health Record in the shortest amount of time for a fraction of the cost of competing products." According to Byers, "We can lower the cost of health care while significantly increasing the quality of that care by implementing VistA across the United States." Read the full article here.

Open Health Tools announces the Supply Chain for Healthcare initiative led by International Technology Group, Inc.
The mission of the Supply Chain Tooling project is to create a set of open source tools allowing providers of Supply Chain Solutions for Healthcare and various Healthcare organizations to synchronize and enhance medical product information between all supply chain participants, categorize and attributize medical product information for providing supply chain optimization services to their clients. The charter for the Supply Chain Tooling project was approved by Open Health Tools board of stewards on July 1st 2008.

Open Health Tools Accepts Major Code Donation From California HealthCare Foundation August 11, 2008- Open Health Tools (OHT) today announced it has accepted a donation from the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) of key software components from a $10 million health information data exchange project. CHCF provided the open source-format software code to OHT, a community of information technology and health care participants, to help accelerate establishment of regional health information exchanges, a critical but often missing piece of the health care delivery system. See https://openhie.projects.openhealthtools.org/ for more information about the Open Health Information Exchange project (openHIE). Full Press Release is here

July 17 2008 - The International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization (IHTSDO) announced today a global effort to improve access to tools needed to develop, maintain, and enable the use of SNOMED CT in health systems around the world. This effort is part of an Open Health Tools Charter Project jointly sponsored by IHTSDO, the National Health Service in the UK and Australia's National e-Health Transition Authority

IHTSDO Sources SNOMED CT Workbench
IHTSDO announced today that it is seeking proposals for the supply and maintenance of a SNOMED CT multi-lingual modular workbench that will host terminology editing, translation, mapping, and other applications. Open Health Tools (OHT) is managing this process on behalf of IHTSDO. Open source solutions will be encouraged, but any offerings will be assessed on their own merits.

The following URL is for the IHTSDO Request for Proposals Request for Proposal

Please use the following link to register to become a bidder for the Request For Proposal. Registration Form

"Having accurate and reliable health information when and where needed saves lives and saves time," says Jennifer Zelmer, IHTSDO's chief executive officer. "By working with partners from around the world, IHTSDO hopes to increase access to standards-based solutions that enable the safe exchange of health information in a privacy-sensitive manner."

SNOMED CTR Modular Workbench - Prior Information Notice

June 13, 2008. The IHTSDO is providing Prior Information Notice for the supply of a SNOMED CTR Modular Workbench. In this information notice, the Background, Modular Workbench, Workbench Functions, Reference Set Management, Translation, Mapping, Workbench Sub-systems, and a Conceptual Architecture of the IHTSDO Project are described.  Because of our organizational neutrality, OHT is providing a support function for this Prior Information Notice.

More Projects Go Live

May 21, 2008. Two new projects have been added to the Open Health Tools Project Repository. The Academic Outreach Charter Project is an open software research and development project that includes a Research Stream, Education Stream and Incubator Stream. The Open Health Workbench Forge Project is the open-source subset of the clinical modeling and data standards tooling platform used by the English National Health Service.

Second Board meeting introduces new members and projects.

April 14, 2008. Open Health Tools' progress was discussed at the second Board of Stewards meeting, held in Chicago on April 14, 2008. New members were introduced (bringing the total to 27), new Charter Projects were detailed (seven have now received at least approval in principle). See the minutes for details and links to all the material presented at the meeting.

Tri-Continental Foundation of Experts, Open Health Tools, to Collaborate on Global Health IT Solutions

April 8, 2008. Open Health Tools today announced a collaborative effort between national health agencies, government-funded organizations and agencies, major healthcare providers, international standards organizations and companies from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States to develop common healthcare IT products and services. See the full press release.

Forge Project Repository Goes Live

Open Health Tools software repository was made publicly accessible on April 2, 2008. The first project to be released is NHS's xmlprocess (an XML Forms engine).

First Open Health Tools Board Meeting a Success

On November 15, 2007, representatives from 24 organizations met in Toronto for the founding board meeting of Open Health Tools.  Hosted by Canada health Infoway, the meeting attracted representatives from the National Health Service in the UK, the National e-Health Transition Authority in Australia, the National Cancer Institute in the US, IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, and many others.  More information, including the minutes of the meeting, and presentations by many of the participants can be found here.  

Approval Of Open Health Tools Governance Documents

On July 25, 2007, representatives from a number of national healthcare agencies and standards agencies approved the governance documents, as part of the preparation for the upcoming founding of Open Health Tools.