Healthcare Informatics Landscapes, Roadmaps, and Blueprints: Towards a Business Case Strategy for Large Scale Ontology Projects panel discussion moderated by Mr. Rex Brooks on 08/25/2005

* Topic andquot;Healthcare Informatics Landscapes, Roadmaps, and Blueprints: Towards a Business Case Strategy for Large Scale Ontology Projectsandquot; * Moderator Rex Brooks * Panelists Bob Smith, Professor Emeritus, California State University Brand Niemann, EPA, chair of the federal Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice, CIO Council David Whitten, WorldVistA, Co-founder; Public Domain Knowledge Bank Marc Wine, GSA Office of Intergovernmental Solutions, Health IT Coordination Mark Musen, Stanford University, Professor of Medicine and Computer Science, Director Stanford Medical Informatics Ram Sriram, NIST, Manager, andquot;Manufacturing Metrology and Standards for the Health Care Enterpriseandquot; program * ONTOLOG forum Wiki page details http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2005_08_25 * Abstract 1. Objectives This Panel Discussion seeks to: + identify the outlines and key landmarks of the current healthcare informatics landscape; + clarify semantic interoperability issues between and amongst existing and planned standards, particularly between OMG-HL7 and OASIS initiatives; + identify an appropriate Ontology Strategy and committment to business valuation; + express key issues for Health Services(Sciences?) Domain Ontology organizational maturity and technology readiness levels; + describe the Time dimension opportunities between remote organizational units. 2. Background: Prior Ontolog Discussion Forums have focused upon topics such as Services Sciences and Ontologies and Tagging for an increasingly focused audience of interdisciplinary experts and cross-disciplinary practitioners, while recent Ontolog Speaker Forums have examined topics of: WorldVistA entitled: andquot;The Importance of Dynamism in the OpenVistA Modelandquot; for an audience of communities seeking interoperability in Electronic Healthcare issues; (F2A) andquot;Enhancing Business Processes Using Semantic Reasoningandquot; for an audience of communities seeking interoperability in Business Processing; andquot;The Maturity of Business Ontologies and Rate of Adoption - examples and challenges from the domain of eCommerce and electronic business collaborationsandquot; for an audience of communities interested in examining the issues of Semantic Web development in the business domain. We wish to engage thought leaders on healthcare informatic frontiers because there are many converging efforts heading in similar directions for standardizing the range of business functions that support healthcare delivery. In other words, the timing is ripe and right for the development of a new ontological viewpoint to guide this committment and inform a strategy to harmonize these converging efforts seamlessly and without a wasteful conflict of competing organizations trying to achieve the same goal.