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.