Medinfo 2015
Event reports | Aug. 19, 2015
Some reflections from Prof David Ingram, President and Chair of the openEHR Foundation Board of Governors
There was, for sure, as anyone rehearsed in the songs of Frank Sinatra would expect, an awful lot of coffee in Brazil. But, exceeding our expectations, perhaps, there was also an awful lot of openEHR as well, at Medinfo2015 in Sao Paulo - in presentations, tutorials, workshops and posters. The exhibition stand, ably brought together by our Management Board and Industry Partners, was well designed and softly stated, capturing the spirit of openEHR in a simple banner – openEHR – An Open, Vendor-Neutral eHealth Data Platform.
We kept coming back to the stand to regroup and attend to new visitors – one minute a conversation about applying openEHR in a 300 centre neurology network in Russia, then half an hour of reminiscence with a conference keynote speaker about the progress of his health data bank initiative, internationally, then shaking hands and talking with a vice-president of one of the major US vendors, keen to explore how they might get involved … and so it went on from Tuesday to Sunday.
All openEHR MedInfo 2015 presentations
High points for me were the presentations, from left field as it were, given by innovative people, who had come to openEHR via the web, got to understand it and how to use the openEHR methodology, arriving on the Medinfo programme, completely unbeknown to any of us, to report their progress. Prof Xudong Lu’s paper on the use and adaptation of archetypes to meet the well-rehearsed and researched requirements for clinical records for his 2500 bed hospital at Zheijang University in Hangzhou, China, was one such quite breath-taking example. There were numerous others.
For our community, it was a triumph of talent, cooperation and inventiveness, and a great opportunity for many of our members pushing for openEHR adoption to meet for the first time, compare notes and socialise with one another and with interested conference delegates. The community spirit, and, dare I say it, its youthfulness, had a great impact on the meeting and openEHR was visited and mentioned throughout the conference. It certainly had a big impact on me.
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