Seong K. Mun, PhD, President and CEO of the Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance (OSEHRA) www.osehra.org reports on OSEHRA’s plans to expand their ongoing engagement with Korean-based members and partners www.osehra.org/post/open-source-activities-korea.
The Catholic University of Korea Prostate Research Center https://medicine.catholic.ac.kr was OSEHRA’s first Korean organizational member. It began when the director Ji Youl Lee, MD began exploring the open source process as well as the possibility of adopting VistA for use in Korean hospitals.
The Korean engagement grew even more when last June when Byungkwan Choi, MD and Junghoon Ro, PhD visited OSEHRA representing three major hospitals in Pusan Korea. They sought to explore the possible adoption of open source VistA and they also met with OSEHRA organization members in person and virtually.
In October, Professor ll Kon, Director of the Health Informatics Lab at Kyungpook National University https://en.knu.ac.kr an internationally recognized expert in HL 7 and FHIR, joined OSEHRA to complete two test installations of VX VistA with Cache, and OSEHRA VistA with GT.M. InterSystems www.intersystems.com and the Defense Security Service (DSS) www.dss.mil also assisted with the test installations for local demo and educational activities.
In November, Hann-ll Lee MD, CEO, Dream Hospital in Daegu Korea visited Oroville Hospital www.orvillehospital.com located in Butte County and Northern California plus he visited the VA Medical Center in San Francisco www.sanfrancisco.va.gov to learn more about VistA. Dr. Lee had a productive meeting with Robert Wentz, CEO of Oroville.
Dr. Lee was impressed with how Wentz made Tenzing VistA a powerful management tool. Using the tool resulted in making Oroville Hospital highly efficient and successful in terms of improving management and also the safety of patients. Dr. Lee also feels that the role of IT in Korean hospitals needs to be changed from just supporting EHRs but also needs to enable data mining and assistance on how to use data effectively to improve efficiency.
Momentum continued in November as SooSangST Corporation became OSEHRA’s newest organizational member. Next, OSHERA met with the corporation’s professional IT team along with business leaders in Pusan Korea to help install a demo of OSEHRA VistA with GT.M.
Also, during the visit to Korea, Dr. Mun briefed the Health Business Unit of KT Corporation www.kt.com formerly Korea Telecom which is South Korea’s largest telephone company plus new Korean partners.
Recently, Samuel Choi, PhD, CEO of IRM Inc. of Korea visited OSEHRA for an in-depth technical discussion. Dr. Mun expects to see more of these visits take place with Korea in the coming years as he looks forward to strengthening all of the partnerships with Korean entities and to further expand Korea’s engagement with the OSEHRA Community.