Epidemic Management panel: Introductions

[Farrukh Najmi <Farrukh.Najmi@Sun.COM>]

I believe this mailing lists includes all the folks that are 
participating in the ehealth-program
for the upcoming OASIS Symposium.

This email thread is intended primarily for the panelist and 
participants in the afternoon
session panel on:

The Role of Technology and Standards in Epidemic Management.

Other folks on list are welcome to contribute their valuable thoughts.

Due to unavailability of some panelist we were unable to schedule a 
meeting for this week in
order to get acquainted and plan the event.

I think we can begin to at least introduce ourselves and brainstorm on 
the format of the panel
over email. Here is a suggested format for introducing ourselves on this 
thread:

-Who are you and what is your affiliation?

-What do you do and how does your work relate to Epidemic Management?

-What do you see are some of the biggest issues you and your 
organization face when dealing with Epidemics?

-What topics would you like to see addressed in the discussion?

Here is my brief intro.... Please introduce yourself in a similar manner 
on this thread.

I am Farrukh Najmi, an XML Standards Architect at Sun Microsystems. A 
brief biography may be found here:

http://www.xmleurope.com/2004/bios_in.asp#najmi

I work on ebXML Registry, which is a meta data and content management 
standard. ebXML Standard,
which is now an ISO 15000 standard, is being used to enable reliable 
information management and
communication in governments, health care and businesses. Having spent 
several years in Health care
Informatics I believe that standards such as ebXML have the potential to 
improve our ability to
prepare for and manage epidemics. At the last XML 2003 Conference I led 
a demonstration:

Epidemic Management Using OASIS ebXML, UBL and XACML standards:

http://ebxmlrr.sourceforge.net/presentations/oasis-demo-xml2003.sxi 
(OpenOffice Slides)
http://ebxmlrr.sourceforge.net/presentations/oasis-demo-xml2003.ppt (ppt 
slides)

My organization does not directly deal with Epidemics but one issue I do 
see from my vantage point
is that recent advances in technology and standards have not been 
adopted on a large scale by health care
standards organization and institutions (things are improving though).

I would like to understand what problems could be solved if information 
could be shared in a timely, secure and seamless
manner across enterprise boundaries.

-- 
Regards,
Farrukh