Newsletter #4
MedBiquitous Consortium Newsletter #4
16 January 2002
Published by the MedBiquitous Consortium
Contents:
- Membership Update
- Community Code Development Update
- Content Management Explained
- XML Member Profile
1. Membership Update
The MedBiquitous Consortium is pleased to welcome two new members, the Society for Critical Care Medicine (http://www.sccm.org) and the American Psychiatric Association (http://www.psych.org). The Society for Critical Care Medicine is a multidisciplinary, multiprofessional organization dedicated to ensuring excellence and consistency in the practice of critical care medicine. The American Psychiatric Association represents physicians in the US and other countries who specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of mental and emotional illnesses and substance use disorders.
2. Community Code Development Update
MedBiquitous Community Code development is underway. The MedBiquitous Laboratory has engaged two outstanding companies to help with the development process: Satyam Computer Services Ltd. (http://www.satyam.com/) and ArsDigita Corporation (http://www.arsdigita.com/). The product of their collaboration will be a suite of software tools that will enable professional medical societies to conduct their business and collaborate more efficiently.
Satyam is a multifaceted end-to-end IT solutions provider known for their quality standards and certifications. Based in India, Satyam has presence in 35 countries across five continents and a customer base of over 300 global companies. The company's emphasis is on acquiring an in-depth knowledge of customers' context and needs, and designing solutions that are fine-tuned to these needs. Ars Digita is a Cambridge, Massachusetts company with broad experience in building scaleable community software. MedBiquitous Consortium has licensed the ArsDigita Community System (ACS), a Java™-based framework for developing sophisticated, database-intensive Web applications, for MedBiquitous Consortium members. ACS is comprised of ACS Core and a comprehensive set of integrated applications for content management and collaboration. ACS will be incorporated into the MedBiquitous Community Code to provide powerful content management and collaboration tools tailored for professional medical societies.
Phase 1 of Community Code development includes Member Management, Content Management, Communication and Collaboration, and Abstract Management. This open source software will be available to all members according to the terms of the MedBiquitous Consortium Member Agreement. Phase 1 is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2002.
3. Content Management Explained
How does your organization author and publish web content? Do staff members receive the files, convert to web format, and publish information to the website one document at a time? Or do a team of physician members, staff, and other contributors publish web information quickly and dynamically, no matter where they are located? For many of our members, a large accumulation of content has made it difficult to maintain their web sites. A key part of the MedBiquitous Community Code, the ArsDigita Content Management System (CMS) allows organizations to manage a large amount of web content and publish new content quickly from any web-connected computer. CMS will be part of the MedBiquitous software suite release in first quarter 2002.
CMS lets administrators create a structured workflow process for content creation and publication. Using CMS, a physician in London can write a web article and submit it to the staff editor in Chicago for approval. Next time the editor logs into CMS, she sees the article submitted for editing in her tasklist. Once she edits and approves the article, the CMS system notifies the publisher that the article is ready for publication. The publisher then publishes the content to the appropriate section of the website. This streamlined process increases the efficiency of web publication, letting organizations increase the amount of content published on their websites and ensuring that this content has been through a formal review process. So high-quality content is published more quickly, allowing members to create richer, more dynamic web sites.
4. XML Member Profile
On October 23, the technical leaders from the Membership Management working group came to the MedBiquitous Consortium offices in downtown Baltimore for a barn raising meeting. Together, the group identified data elements and key uses for the MedBiquitous XML Member Schema. The resulting specification document has been accepted as a working draft by the Membership Management working group. Working group members will continue to refine the specification before submitting it as a Request For Comments document open to member comment.
The member profile provides flexibility in tracking and exchanging member information and allows societies to function effectively with their outside business partners. Ultimately, this member profile could become one of the most prevalent standards used by professional medical societies. MedBiquitous Community Code software will implement this XML schema to facilitate its adoption and usage. Thanks to everyone who participated in this outstanding and productive barn raising meeting!
