Within the Open Source Health Informatics community, Fred Trotter is known as a hacktivist. He works for social change by coding and promoting health-related Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), a passion and expertise he brings to his role as Cautious Patient Foundation’s technology director.
A recognized expert in free and open-source medical software and security systems, Fred brings 10 years of experience to the foundation where he is responsible for driving and developing technology strategy and execution of projects, such as YourDoctorsAdvice.org, from the discovery through the deployment phases.
Fred was the only Open Source representative, invited by the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, to testify on the definition of meaningful use under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).This regulation will have tremendous implications in what physicians and hospitals must do to receive up to $27 billion in bonus Medicare payments for adoption of electronic health records.
Fred also represented the Open Source Electronic Health Records community in negotiations with the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT), the leading EHR certification body.
The original author of FreeB, the world’s first GPL medical billing engine, Fred in 2004 received the LinuxMedNews Achievement Award for his work on FreeB. An editor for the Open Source EHR review project with the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Open Source Working Group (OSWG), he is also a member of WorldVistA and is the programmer behind Astronaut Shuttle, the first cloud-based VA VistA offering.
Fred has spoken frequently on open-source medical software and security system issues at the SCALE DOHCS conference, LinuxWorld, and DefCon, and is the master of ceremonies for the Open Source Health Conference. He has been quoted in multiple articles on health information technology in several prominent print and online journals, including Wired, ZDNet.com, Government Health IT, Modern Healthcare, Linux Journal, Free Software Magazine, NPR and LinuxMedNews.
Fred holds a B.S in Computer Science, a B.A in psychology and a B.A in philosophy from Trinity University, with minors in Business Administration, Cognitive Science and Management Information Systems. Before he began working on health software, Fred passed the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification and consulted for VeriSign on Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) security for major hospitals and health institutions. Fred was originally trained on information security at the Air Force Information Warfare Center.
