EGADSS, like other successful open source projects, will thrive through collaboration. It improves the overall product, providing added development resources and broadening the “brain trust” that guides the development and improvement of the tools.
Members of the VCH Primary Health Care Networks
Both project leaders and clinicians, are the first group of collaborators. Linkages with the proposed development team already exist with several informatics projects within Vancouver Coastal Health, including the PARIS project and the Inner City Health Linking Project. Collaboration with these groups will be sought during the development EGADSS. The physicians who are involved in primary care renewal in British Columbia are leaders in primary care change. Those who have been selected are enthusiastic and interested in healthcare reform and in the collaborative opportunities an open source project such as this brings. Many are academic and clinical leaders in a variety of areas from maternity care to emergency medicine, geriatrics, teaching, and evidence based medicine. Their input will significantly guide the growth of the platform.
National Research Council's e-Health group
National Research Council (NRC) interested in knowledge management and knowledge translation, which EGADSS is focused on, providing further opportunities for collaboration.
The School of Health Information Science at the University of Victoria
The School of Health Information Science is exploring how EGADSS platform can help support their research agenda. Dr. Malcolm Maclure's group is interested in using the EGADSS tool for his Consequences of drug cost sharing: a randomized trial project, which proposes “to develop, implement, and evaluate a policy trial that will combine the clinical safety and appropriateness of differential cost-sharing (reference drug program), with the stronger cost-containment effectiveness of physician-based drug budgets.” Finally, they have committed one of their Post-Doctoral Fellows to begin a project that assesses a community-based Palliative Care Brief Pain Index. The work that is ongoing in the palliative care team would be integrated into EGADSS as appropriate. Discussions are ongoing to ensure that work is compatible and supportive.
The Department of Computer Science at the University of Victoria
The Department of Computer Science at the University of Victoria is actively participating in the development of EGADSS. Dr Jens Jahnke and several of his graduate students have been working directly on EGADSS from the project start.
Electronic Medical Summary (e-MS) Project
The e-MS Project is one of the provincial focus projects sponsored by the BC Ministry of Health from of the Primary Health Care Transition Fund. It builds on the initial design work undertaken by the BCMA, who is a key partner in the initiative, and was chosen by stakeholders as one of the key projects to support the BC Electronic Health Record (EHR) strategy. Both e-MS and EGADSS teams collaborate on the implementation of Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) standard for information interoperability.
The Research Office in the Department of Family Medicine (University of British Columbia)
University of British Columbia (UBC) is developing a Primary Care Research Network to look at Health Services research in BC. The PCRN is envisioned as a core group of 12-24 practices where research studies can be run. These networks will need a system to connect them and to collect study data. An extended version of EGADSS would have the ability to actively recruit patients (through automated alerts and practice profiling) and to capture data, would make the distributed network possible. The PCRN module would be built from EGADSS which would actually share many of the same attributes. Currently the department has received over one million dollars in funding to support the researchers in the PCRN over the next three years. Current work is looking to secure funding for the infrastructure development for the technology of a PCRN. Development with the PCRN would aid the evaluation process of the PHCNs.
University of Northern British Columbia
Dr. Bill Clifford is interested in collaborating, both through the sharing of ideas an also through integration of EGADSS into his EMR: Medical Office Information System (MOIS). Bill has been associated with teaching residents and has been building MOIS into a robust EMR over the past decade. Bill has close ties to the Northern Health Authority.
Centre for Healthcare Innovation and Improvement (CHIi)
Dr. Nikki Shaw is interested in exploring two aspects of EMRs and is quite interested in working with a local team on these projects. The first is exploring the human-computer interface and interaction in the physician's office to assess how it impacts care. The second involves their existing project to evaluate the deployment of primary care EMRs in BC. Dr. Shaw is one of the founding members of the American Medical Informatics Association's Open Source Working Group and is interested in seeing platforms such as EGADSS grow.