Welcome to OpenHIE Discourse! Please introduce yourself here to other visitors. Let’s get to know each other!
Need a little help?
Since I created the topic, I’ll start. 
I’m Jamie Thomas, Community Manager for OpenHIE. In 2011 I joined a team of talented individuals working to establish the Rwandan Health Information Exchange (RHIE). The benefit of the approach used in Rwanda became apparent and in 2013 I was lucky enough to help evolve our approach and develop the OpenHIE community.
Originally, I started out by attending calls, taking notes, and developing communication materials then my role evolved to be responsible for more and more of the community and its growth.
As Community Manager, I focus on communication, outreach, and mentorship with and for the community, which includes quite a bit of varied tasks. In addition to the day-to-day operations of the community, I also work on our events and outreach programs. If you’re interested in helping in any of those areas, get in touch. We’re always looking for leadership as we grow!
When I’m not working on OpenHIE I assist on various projects to develop communities of practice and management processes. Although more importantly I am the life guide to two beautiful children and wife to one amazing man 
Hello. I’m Jennifer Shivers. I work at Regenstrief, which is located in Indianapolis, Indiana on the Indiana University / Purdue University Indianapolis Campus called IUPUI. I am currently working on the Ethiopia Data Use Partnership project and on DATIM. I also work on OpenHIE and serve as one of the Associate Architects that supports the Lead Architect, Shaun Grannis.
I’m interested in how countries will evolve their list of standards and I am also interested in the use cases that countries are starting HIE with.
I love to travel and my bucket list includes:
Seeing the northern lights
Seeing the Great Wall of China
Seeing an Orca in the wild
Hi! I’m Michelle Cox. I’m the Program Coordinator for Global Health Informatics and have been with Regenstrief Institute in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA since July 2015. My role within OpenHIE is to provide administrative support within the community (primarily for DevOps, Architecture, and Leadership). I also lend support to other projects within GHI as well as to the overall program. I feel honored to be part of a diverse group of people who all work together to make the world a better place.
On a personal note, I’ve been married for what seems like forever 
and we have two kids - my adult daughter and my son who will graduate from high school in 2020. 
I am also a dog mom to four wonderful dogs. 
I love to laugh and try to find humor in every day.
Hello, I’m Eric Jahn, CTO at Alexandria Consulting and for hslynk.com, an open source PaaS for Human Services with APIs. hslynk.com can also do self-sufficiency matrices for Social Determinants, among other things like MPI.
I’m having challenges bridging Health with Human Services for SDH purposes, and with fostering robust open source communities around both.
On a personal note, I’m located in St. Petersburg, Florida. I have a hyper dog and a bad habit of windsurfing (no, not kites). My favorite artists at the moment are Bob Ross, Skerik, Miles Davis, The Melvins, and Mark Lanegan.
Looking forward to chatting in the forums.
I am Haftamu Kebede, lecturer at Mekelle University, Ethiopia. I worked as a developer(more of web application development) the last five years and joined the academy recently. I am a member of a team working to open an academy focused on Interoperability of Health Systems(Interoperability layer of OpenHIE).
I hope to have good contribution playing my role in this community!
Hi all – I’m Derek Ritz and I live in Toronto, Canada. Currently I am working on PEPFAR projects related to expenditure reporting using DATIM, patient-level monitoring, and general MOH data alignment and interoperability. In support of this work, I engage with international digital health standards bodies such as HL7, IHE and WHO regarding interoperability specifications of importance to PEPFAR and its data systems groups. Over the last few years I have also been working on World Bank and WHO-supported UHC initiatives and on digital health security, privacy and “safety” (SaMD) projects. I am a longstanding and active member of a number of OpenHIE communities, the leads team, and the ARB.
One of the most pressing challenges I see related to HIE implementation in our partner countries is the challenge of going to scale. There is a very different family of success criteria that must be met when standing up digital health infrastructure to support heavy transaction volumes against millions of client records. Recognizing and satisfying these criteria will invite us to cultivate a whole new set of competencies within our OpenHIE communities.
Hmmm… Jamie’s question 4… I think, for me, the perfect song has to be the mellow live version of Ocean Pearl by 54-40 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7yHhFvIl2c). I mean… it’s a solid “California” shuffle… and then the ghost of Ella Fitzgerald possesses the backup singer… and the band just goes with it… awesome! As for bands… I miss Gord Downie terribly, and lament that the Tragically Hip will never release another album (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8Fi46BFAF0&list=PLjzxksagVkmyZZahPb0TbJfuVZAOFYD-G). I can get some solace, though. Since 2010 I’ve been imbibing on doses of Hot Water (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZotBNGzWsFs)! My three adult children and one daughter-in-law would quickly but politely point out that these examples illustrate just how trapped I am in a musical time-warp. Oh well… one of the benefits of having just become an empty-nester is that I finally get to play what I want on the stereo! 
HI I am Tychus Nyanga,a senior health informatics advisor at Palladium Group in kenya, am also a developer,as an informatics advisor my roles entails providing technical advice to the county governments in matters to do with EMR and National UPI(Unique patient identifier) implementation. Our main challenge has been coming up with a national policy in regards to UPI and county health enterprise architectures. i am glad to be joining this group and look forward to great discussions
Hi Am Magembe sharif software developer minimum of 2years highly in java and frontend framework,Am currently volunterring with openmrs opensource and would love to join this organisation and contribute to it happy to be in this community
Hi Tychus - apologies for my delay in responding, but we are glad you are here! Given your interest and expertise in National UPI (Unique patient identifier) implementation, I wonder if you would have an interest in participating in the Client Registry community? It would be great to get your input and hear about your experiences. I lead the CR calls and would welcome your engagement. Let me know how we can help.
All the best,
Shaun
@nyanga89 details about our community focused on the client registry component of OpenHIE’s architecture can be found here - https://wiki.ohie.org/display/SUB/Client+Registry+Community. You can find details about the sub-community, calls and some resources.
Hello. Nice to e-meet you. Here are some suggestions of how you might jump in. There are sub communities that support these architecture components. You may want to join one or more of them. In addition, we have a DevOps Community and an Architecture Community which are more technical.
Let me know if I can help you engage.
Jennifer
Hello All!
I am located in Indianapolis, IN on the west-side of town very close to the Regenstrief building just a 15 minute commute from my home. I am working on the OpenHIE Academy project as a summer intern developing capabilities for the HIE training curriculum. This project will fulfill the capstone requirement for the summer course I am currently enrolled in. I’ll be completing my final semester in the fall of this year. I enjoy learning and educating myself about the benefits and values of OpenHIE in developing countries. I have not come across any major challenges at this time. I appreciate the mission and values of GHI and I’m happy to collaborate with the team. I look forward to learning more.
My favorite band is St. Beauty.
Hi All!
My name is Kasey Cummins and I joined the OpenHIE team as the Associate Community Manager at the Regenstrief Institute in Indianapolis, Indiana, in September 2020. Currently, I am working to be more knowledgeable about OpenHIE, the initiatives and structures for this community, and about how I will play a role in promoting engagement.
My favorite song or band is a very difficult choice to make and certainly varies depending on the day! I would say that A Day to Remember has been one of my most favorite bands for the longest amount of time. Their lyrics are written so beautifully, though sometimes they can be difficult to discern (some songs are better than others)! My favorite song might just be Little Wonders by Rob Thomas. That song is so meaningful, calming, and it also promotes mindfulness, which is something I’ve definitely tried to focus on for myself lately!
Hi everyone! I’m based in Peoria, IL and am working on EMR interoperability / learning more about open source healthcare systems such as OpenMRS, OpenLMIS, etc. My background is in healthcare, data analytics, and web development (Python on the backend and JS on the frontend).
I don’t have any particular challenges around HIE since I’m in the beginning stages of learning about the ecosystem. However, I am interested in learning about the common challenges faced by HIE implementors.
And finally, my favorite song (this year) is City Lock by Keznamdi. It’s a dancehall reggae tune that highlights the music genre’s increasing popularity over the years.
Hi Everyone.
My Name is Felistah Yogo(aka Felly) a mentor,mother and Health IT enthusiast.I was born and raised I Kenya , currently living in Arizona USA . I am currently working with a State HIE as an Integration Engineer. In my role I get to support the client facing and technical interoperbility needs of the organization.
I am interested in learning more about OpenHIE Role and future goals in Supporting partner countries in achieving the much needed interoperbility goal in global health and UHC. I would like to explore opportunities for exchanging ideas and learn .
My favorites song is Hold My Hand by MJ and Akon.I also love many of Kenyan Sounds like Ohangla ,Benga etc
Thanks you all
Welcome to the community @felistah and @rcummings. It’s great to get to know a little bit about you both from your introductions!
@rcummings - With your interest in learning about common challenges faced by implementers, the OpenHIE Implementers Network may be of most interest to you! This next call is April 26 and conversations about Implementers and the challenges they face can be found and posted on the OHIN Discourse category.
@felistah - With your interests in reaching UHC and Interoperability, you may be interested in the Health Financing Towards UHC Subcommunity (their next call is April 8) and the Interoperability Layer subcommunity (their next call is April 20)
I hope these links are helpful in working towards your interests. Please reach out if you have any questions!