We have submitted proposals for previous Digital Square awards, and received partial funding for Notice C. OpenMRS is an important global good and all of the feedback that we have received has been positive. Clearly, this RFP is an important opportunity for OpenMRS and our community.
With that said, we’d like to submit a concept note in collaboration with interested community members and partners. I have time to help with concept note development (particularly in regard to the community engagement component of the RFP), develop budgets, etc. At this moment, we need specific assistance with outlining and developing our technical approach. An initial draft concept note is due next Friday, May 10, with the finalized concept note to be submitted on May 27.
Please post your questions and interest here on Talk or PM me.
On Thursday’s Operations call, there was a lot of good discussion around Notice D - check out the call notes. We have a better idea of our objectives and a clearer focus that will help us think through the consortium, priming or subbing, and other pieces of the proposal.
That said, we need a small group to continue the discussion about our approach to both technical scope and consortium. We discussed meeting on Tuesday, 12 May at 10:30pm IST | 8pm Nairobi | 7pm Cape Town | 5pm Accra | 1pm Boston | 10am Seattle.
If you have suggestions or ideas that you want to talk through, you can raise them here, in the Google doc, or use OpenMRS’ #strategy-operations Slack channel.
Earlier today, Digital Square had another Q&A for Notice D. You can find transcripts, recordings, and notes from both Q&A’s on the Digital Square Wiki.
Here is where things stand now:
In terms of approach, we’ve identified two outputs that OpenMRS can provide that could respond to the maturity scenarios outlined in the IHE White Paper. These could be considered two different work packages:
Work package 1 would focus on a module that performs indicator calculations and transmits results using mADX messaging
Work package 2 would build module that submits a minimum data set using FHIR resources to an HIE with a FHIR warehouse/CQL engine.
Last week, we spent some time talking about managing a consortium for the end-to-end work or focusing on our piece of work in an end-to-end solution. We leaned towards the latter, as that is more in line with the two outputs we identified.
We also have the option of being a part of multiple proposals. Two other groups have reached out to us about joining their consortium. Both of these groups are proposing solutions that work for the paired or integrated system scenario outlined in the IHE white paper. These are essentially proposals for an end-to-end solutions, so joining these efforts fits with the direction our conversations to date have taken.
If you have feedback or ideas on any of this, please join our discussion! If you are interested in thinking through either of the two work packages with @maurya, feel free to jump into the concept note. This will also continue to be an agenda item for our Thursday Strategy & Operations calls and Tuesday Fundraising calls.
I came back from leave to news regarding Notice D concept note submissions. The consortium’s concept note was accepted to go on to the next round!
Here’s a recap from earlier updates that are in various May Strategy and Operations call notes:
A few of us (@maurya, @gschmidt, myself) met and reviewed the approaches shared by potential consortium partners and discussed whether or not we should join forces with Jembi and OCL. General consensus was that all three concept notes together would make a complementary proposal. Based on our previous discussion, we agreed that being a part of Jembi’s consortium allows us to focus on our scope, rather than managing a larger consortium working on a full, end-to-end solution.
On the various Q&A’s, Digital Square consistently encouraged applicants to propose multiple work packages with clear organizational leads for each package in order to prioritize and fund different work packages if and when funding comes in. With this in mind, the contributions for each POS system (including OpenMRS) will make up individual work packages, OCL’s contributions are another work package, and then work related to the CQL engine would be another package.
Here’s what comes next:
For the next two weeks, we’ll be working on the technical application (excluding budget and budget narrative) for our work package. The consortium’s technical application will be uploaded to the OAP platform by July 5.
Between July 8 and 19th, other applicants and stakeholders in the community should provide feedback, comments, and suggestions to your application.
In terms of our work package, we’ll need to:
Review the relevant work package
Add in a set of proposed objectives, activities, and schedule
Please feel free to review and comment on our work package, help with the proposed objectives/activities, work on the schedule, etc. Would especially appreciate if someone can review and update our GGMA!
