Foreword
The Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium (“CalConnect”) is a global non-profit organization with the aim to facilitate interoperability of technologies across user-centric systems and applications.
CalConnect works closely with liaison partners including international organizations such as ISO, OASIS and M3AAWG.
The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance are described in the CalConnect Directives.
In particular the different approval criteria needed for the different types of ISO documents should be noted. This document was drafted in accordance with the editorial rules of the CalConnect Directives.
Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent rights. CalConnect shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights. Details of any patent rights identified during the development of the document will be in the Introduction and/or on the CalConnect list of patent declarations received (see www.calconnect.com/patents).
Any trade name used in this document is information given for the convenience of users and does not constitute an endorsement.
This document was prepared by Technical Committee CALCONNECT.
Introduction
CalConnect sponsored an open half-day workshop on the Veterans Administration Scheduling System Challenge on Wednesday afternoon 21 May 2014 as part of CalConnect XXX, hosted by AOL in Dulles, Virginia. Registered attendance for the event was 47, of which 26 came for the workshop; a few also registered for part of the Conference taking place on Thursday and Friday. The preliminary agenda and notes about the panelists may be found at VA Scheduling System Workshop.
Workshop on the Veterans Administration Scheduling System Challenge, CalConnect XXX, Dulles, Virginia, May 21 2014
1. Why we convened this workshop
In late 2012, The U.S. Veterans Administration announced a “prize contest” to “…encourage creation of systems that help Veterans make appointments to receive outpatient and ambulatory care from the Veterans Health Administration” and ultimately “…to replace the current Medical Scheduling Package (MSP) with a scheduling product which is a standards-based, modular, extensible and scalable…”. Recently, when the winning proposals were announced, we decided to use the VA Scheduling Contest as a jump point to explore the importance of open calendaring and scheduling standards with respect to Healthcare IT.
CalConnect’s goal for the workshop, and especially the Panel Discussion, was to engage our membership with the panelists and other attendees in a discussion of Health Care scheduling needs and requirement in the context of calendaring and scheduling standards and interoperability. We hoped to learn at a functional level what Health Care has today in Calendaring and Scheduling, what it needs in the Calendaring and Scheduling standards and specifications that it does not have today, and what its needs will be tomorrow.
In turn, from the discussion we hoped would come better understanding, an initial insight as to what areas of the calendaring and scheduling work we are undertaking were relevant to Health Care, and how they may need to be changed or extended to better address the needs of the Health Care community.
2. Meeting Summary
2.1. Part 1 — Presentations
Gary Schwartz, CalConnect President: Welcome and Contextualizing the Workshop
Wes Turner, OSEHRA: Introduction to VistA and OSEHRA’s role in the VA Scheduling Contest
Dr. William Smith, MedRed, and Ryan Lehman, BT Global Services: Health eTime Solution for the VA 21st Century Medical Scheduling Contest together with a Video of Health e-Time.
Doug Golub, MediSked: Scheduling for Home and Community-based Services
2.2. Part 2 — Panel Discussions
The panel was moderated by Scott Mace, Senior Editor-Technology at HealthLeaders Media and a Director of CalConnect, and included:
Toby Considine (TC9)
William Cox (Cox Software Architects)
Doug Golub (MediSked)
Mike Henderson (OSEHRA)
Ken Rubin (HP Enterprise Services)
Wilfredo Sánchez Vega (CalConnect)
Dr. William Smith (MedRed)
3. Attending and Participating Organizations
Participants and attendees for the Workshop came from the following organizations and companies
1and11
Accenture Federal Services
AOL1
Apple1
BT Global Services
BusyMac1
Carnegie Mellon University1
Cox Software Architects LLC
Department of Veterans Affairs
DSS Inc.
fruux GMBH1
Google1
HealthLeaders Media
HP Enterprise Services
Marten Gajda1
Leidos
MedicaSoft LLC
MediSked
MedRed
Mozilla1
OSEHRA
PriceWaterhouseCoopers
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute1
SchedJoules1
Systems Made Simple
TC9
TimeTrade Systems1
Univesity of California, Berkeley1
4. Mailing List for Workshop Attendees
Following the Panel Discussion, CalConnect offered to arrange a limited-life mailing list for everyone who attended the workshop to be able to interact. The e-mails of everyone registered for the workshop have been entered into the list; anyone who is not interested in being on the list may remove themselves or send Dave Thewlis a request to be removed. We anticipate the mailing list will be shut down by the end of the summer unless there is some need to keep it available.
5. Conclusions and Thanks
Although it is too early to identify specific areas for collaboration and work, it is clear that CalConnect’s work in scheduling, in particular the applicability of some of the protocols we are developing such as VPOLL and VAVAILABILITY to such needs as machine-to-machine scheduling, are extremely pertinent, and as our understanding increases we look forward to making these tools more usable and available to the Health Care community. Of course, involvement by interested members of the Health Care community in this work will be essential both for understanding and resources and we invite members of that Health Care community to get involved with us.
CalConnect thanks all of the participants in the workshop and everyone who worked to make it a success.