Open Source in Health Care
The use of open source software increases rapidly everywhere. This also holds for the health care domain, but the progress is going slower. An example is the openkaart website, which tries to create a meetingplace for open source software in health care. They focus on
- Family doctor information systems (open source datamodels and implementations, (MedEUR based) communication models, CorbaMED architecture).
- Electronic Health Record (EHR). Medical information will be collected and stored locally by medical personnel, but should be accessible by others (if entitled to) everywhere anytime. This information should be represented clearly in a so called EHR. Projects like OpenSDE and OpenEMED are busy in this area.
Besides the openkaart website, many other websides can be found on open source projects in health care. For example linuxmednews which focusses on Linux and open source, or the manifest open source.
It may seem strange to encourage open source software when we think about security. In the past, software projects were usually created behind closed doors. However, those systems often were not so secure as they thought. On the other hand, open source software is publicly available and can quickly be patched. Also openness enforces well thought security protocolls instead of security by obscurity. For more on this see the article written by some members of the SoS group.
Research Questions:
- How are security issues dealt with in open source projects?
Notes:
- Although not necessary, programming skills are useful. Open source lends itself to do some programming (with respect to a good research question!) by oneself or on an existing project possibly with other people.
- Patient information is stored locally because the doctor who stores the information is responsible for it. Therefore, information cannot be collected in a large central data base. Also, when information changes, old information may not be removed. The complete history of information items needs to be stored.
Further References:
Some further interesting references are the following: