'The Argus Forum 2004' - 6 - 7 May 2004, Canberra

This forum was hosted by the Health OpenWare Foundation as a two day participative workshop aimed at existing users of Argus, potential users of Argus and vendors of healthcare software applications that may interoperate with Argus.

The demand for Argus and the interest it has generated across the community of healthcare providers (especially amongst the GP community and the hospital networks and alliances) has grown dramatically. The demand for information on Argus is becoming more and more demanding because of the dramatic increase in interest from those who are making decisions on their messaging strategies. This forum was designed to service that need and allow the early adopters and pioneers to meet with other potential users and interested parties, to share their experience gained so far, avoid re-inventing the wheel and encourage leveraging off the activities of others.

The objectives of the Forum were to:

• Educate those interested in investigating Argus as a secure clinical messaging mechanism.
  
• Provide an opportunity for Argus users to share experiences, aims and the applications where they are using the facility.
  
• Provide an opportunity for potential users and software vendors to share and input on their desires for the forward development of the facility.
  
• Provide a means for attendees to demonstrate actual implementations of Argus in various applications.
  
• Promote Argus for wider adoption.

More than 60 attendees included:

• Representatives of the major initiatives that have projects underway with Argus.
  
• Representatives of regions, Divisions, area health services and hospitals etc who want to gather information on the viability of Argus and what can be achieved.
  
• Vendor companies that provide applications in all the healthcare domains that will want to provide communications (messaging) capability to their software.
  
• Policy-makers who will benefit by having exposure to the growing demand for Argus and will want to assess its place in their programmes and plans.
  
• Communications solutions vendors who may be encouraged to cooperate with the Argus initiative to provide more interoperability and compatibility in the messaging domain.

The Forum program included:

• Argus update by the Argus team.
  
• Formal presentations from those undertaking projects and initiatives using Argus.
  
• Workshops on implementing Argus and Train-the-Trainer sessions.
  
• Forums/workshops on open source development and PKI security in Argus applications.

The programme, along with links to presentations given at the forum, can be viewed here.