In a bid to bring together a network of international agencies working in the field health information systems - University of Oslo, NORAD, OpenMRS, WHO, HMN, Society for Health Information Systems Programs (HISP India), the National Health Systems Resource Center (NHSRC) has convened an “International HMIS Workshop on Integrated e-Health Architectures”. NHSRC, Delhi is an institution setup by the Ministry of Health to provide technical assistance to NRHM on various areas including HMIS.
We met in Goa from 26th to 30th July, 2009 and exchanged ideas on how we can build on integrated e-health infrastructure. Discussions ranged from what applications to integrate and different ways to inter-operate. Some were standard ways to interoperate while others were “not-so-standard” ways to interoperate. The most important thing was that everyone was part of the discussion and the next few weeks to months will be interesting to watch how the integration work goes forward.
The Gujarat state representatives: Mr. KK Panchal, Dr. Avashia and Sangeeta also presented their ideas on integration. I was pleasantly surprised that state representatives were for once clear about what they were expecting. Eventhough it was not very clear how, they knew what they wanted as the final product. They were also ready to bring the different parties (software-MNCs and government) together on the table for integration.
But for me what is more interesting was the way the participants shared their thoughts and philosophy of integration outside the domain of software and technology.
I have promised myself that I will be blogging atleast 3 times a week… and will be sharing a lot more of the thoughts that were shared in the workshop. A lot about what we have been working on and how we are planning to move forward in bringing a change in health informatics.
