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Advice for an Open Source Development Grant?
IgD asks: "My colleagues and I are developing an open source medical records system. A senior supervisor approached us and let us know a third party is offering a decent amount of money in the form of a grant for any legitimate medical research project. We were all but promised the money if we could come up with a proposal. Has anyone in the Slashdot community received a grant for open source software development? Are there any good examples of such a grant available? How could one measure the results of open source development for publication?"
Have you checked around Source Forge for similar projects?
Have you check www.linuxmednews.com?
There are lots of projects in progress currently, perhaps you could work with one of those and help them out?
Alric
Since you're doing medical research, the National Institute of Health's SBIR program seems most relevant. You can also find the application forms and guidelines if you look around.
They're in the open source medical software biz as well.
This guy is way out there
My most successful string of open source solutions involved a small break with an audio-video company. I set up a small Linux network, with a small CRM that was based on, believe it or not, a web based PHP driven "application" that I designed to catalogue my DVDs, VHS tapes, CDs, games, books, and comic books. mySQL is the backend, Apache its "OS". I added a few useful modules from popular CRMs that I found on Sourceforge. All of this meant nothing to my client, they were only happy that it fit their every need (they were managing customer data, billing, scheduling, and reports across a series of applications like Excel and Quick Books Pro, and good old pen and paper). Needless to say, not only was my solution extremely scalable and cheap, but it removed the hassle of having to have a file cabinet handy and three or four programs. All they did was click a little link on their KDE panel, and up came Mozilla and their portal to my program.
They quickly refferred me to their lawyer's office, my own dentist, and another small business that specialized in boat repair. I quickly made about $12,000 in my spare time, and not one bit of the software I used cost anything. I have yet to return to any of their sites to fix anything since, and this was over a year ago. The only thing I did was give them each a call when Redhat made RHN available so that they could sign up and have their systems updated for them remotely, for very little $$$. The circle of Linux business life eventually brought money back to Red Hat, whom's OS I used for free as an ISO download, at all of these sites.
You gotta love it.
The important part to open source is the record format. After that, I can live with open or closed source software to access it. An open file format is imperative though, for any useful portability of records for patients.
A very good person to ask about this kind of thing would be Jon Hall (Maddog) at Linux International.
I believe he has been involved with Open Source Development grants and LI might even have such a program.
Bill
Not sure if the directly answer your question, but: "The Nonprofit Open Source Initiative (NOSI) was begun in June 2001 to bridge this gap between the nonprofit and open source communities."
Seems like a good place to start, or at least to be in contact people who might be able to point you in the right direction.
LinuxFund.org has been kind enough to supply two of my projects (GNUpdate and Gaim for Qtopia) with funding and hardware. It may not directly relate to your question, since it sounds like you already have someone that may be giving you the money, but you can look at their policies and requirements, and request more information.
I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to get NIH funding and/or grants from other sources to build a low-cost or freeware EMR system with a well-written proposal and a knowledgeable Principle Investigator directing the project (you probably need someone with a PhD in Medical Informatics or an M.D./D.O. to be your PI). If you don't have a qualified PI to head the project yet, find one. You don't want to be perceived as a novice. The people you contact will likely be far more helpful the more you sound like you know what you're doing.
Imho they are very different goals.
Not necessarily. They can get the job done and have open source code. That would probably depend on any stipulations for the grant.
As for the money, I don't know the specifics of their project, but the money could be used to buy computers, equipment, etc. I work for a university based hospital, and have dealt a bit with research proposals, grants, etc. The grants I have dealt with are typically used to pay for things that come up in the course of research, or buys things that the department might not be able to buy on it's own. It might also be used to pay someone's salary, but I'm guessing they're not looking to get rich. As far as who is providing the grant, my guess would be that they want to do a Netscape/Mozilla kind of thing, or they might want make money on installing the systems (service and hardware).
I wish them luck
Open Source != unsupported. Users can get
support contracts if they need them. In fact,
they can get them from *anyone* competent enough.
Local shops, big contract shops, anyone - users
are not tied to the vendor.
Some time ago, one of our clients had a need for medical software for a very small business. Since they did not have a lot of income to purchase expensive software, I had researched into the medical field briefly. You might find a couple of the links below may lead you to some people that can help you find the information you need to get yourself on your way. Some may even be willing to lend you a hand.
r at ing_Systems/Linux/Projects/Industry_Specific/Healt h_Care/
t m
http://www.hardhats.org/
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med/his
directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Ope
www.hi-europe.info/library/opensource/default.h
You have identified some of the problems with some of the EMRs, but the reality is that the two largest health care providers in the US (the Department of Defense and the Vetrans Affairs Administration) have used EMRs for decades for close to 100% of their patient care. In addition there is an exponetial growth in EMR installations in the US, Europe and South/Central America.
Most grants have to include an objective as well as a summary of how the objective can be verified and progress measured. I would figure for a software project grant you would either work out a concrete specification of data and structure (such as a standardized system to base future developments and cross-platform data compatibility guidelines) or base system with a realitically obtainable (and usable) featureset.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
There are many examples of this available. My group (at a medical school) has collaborated on a number of grant projects (government and private granting agencies) where money was awarded for the development of open source software. In fact, the grants we have worked on require that the software be made publicly available (although most of what we do is of little interest outside of clinical/educational medicine).
If you want another great example, contact the IT group at the University of Delaware. They developed (under a grant and collaboration with a few other schools) uPortal. This is an open source portal system which is packaged and serviced by several different vendors (RedHat style) like SCT and Campus Pipeline. Since the development they have found they get a better response from other granting organizations as well as vendors (like Blackboard and WebCT to develop modules for it). So not only do you get the immediate benefit of money to assist in the development (to pay salaries, buy computers, buy software, etc.) but you get many continuing benefits from it as well.
You might want to do some investigation with the Veterans Administration also. They have done alot with Medical systems for the government both public and private system. I worked with one that used to be called Veterans File Manager.
Wrong.
I've been on grant review boards, and being open source is big positive factor. Grant review boards are often concerned that 1) you aren't duplicating the wheel 2) that the software that you produce won't be orphaned once the grant runs out. There is also the "why aren't you funding this via venture capital" question.
Open Mash was funded for a while by the NSF, a common source of academic funding. I'm not sure if you and your colleagues are in an academic setting, but the Open Mash web site does have the proposals and reviews of those proposals available on the site. Check out the Papers and Publications area.
I'm not exactly sure what you're asking when you talk about measuring the results of an open source project for publication. But any proposal would have to talk about why the project you are proposing has value in-line with the goals of the committee or group you are submitting the proposal to. Knowing exactly what those goals are can be difficult. This is one of those situations where you really have to tailor your writing to the specific reader(s).
Many university hospitals and other large hospitals all have some sort of electronic record system, and many are converting to an all electronic system.
I am not aware of any that are open source, Most I imagine, as everything is in medicine, has to be tested relentlessly and thus is costly and a real pain in the butt to get certified for new security regulations.
From a doctors viewpoint (mine), they are a pain to use - they slow you down, patients wait LONGER!. It's much easier to dictate and have the secretary slip the note into the chart. A positive aspect of the EMRs is that charts don't get lost (yah, but computers crash).
Many of the younger doctors are used to EMRs and will probably goto that in their private offices, 'cause they're used to it. I could go on for hours, but I'll stop here.
..........FULL STOP.
No need to get angry. Read what you wrote:
don't know if anyone could even use it. Under HIPAA law you have to have a business associate's agreement with all vendors, and ALL vendors must supply support for the products or they aren't compliant. That's not even about the actual security or code flow of the program, but the whole project itself. I do HIPAA audits, and I couldn't give them a a good rating on the risk analysis if they used it, because of that. No support==non-compliant. I could suggest they buy it from your company if your selling it, I don't see it being used by an IT staff somewhere without a vendor.
The parent of that posting is the original article. Shall we quibble about what the word it means? Open Source? This project based on Open Source? The ONLY information you have on the project based on the original article is that (a) it is open source and (b) that it has the inside track on funding. If you read the sourceforge entry, the only additional information you can gain is that they plan to use Windows/Delphi/Kylix on the client side and MySQL on the server side. (eeeyuck! but that's a technical preference of mine, nothing to do with HIPAA audits).
So, whether you meant that you "couldn't give them a good rating on the risk analysis if they used [open source]" or that you "couldn't give them a good rating on the risk analysis if they used [project you know nothing about except that it uses open source and has an inside track on some funding]" -- the bottom line of what you wrote implies that (since the only substantive thing you know about the software they propose is that it will be an open source package for keeping medical records) this medical records system will be inadequate.
Obviously, there is a big difference between what you wrote and what you meant to say .
If what you meant to do was to alert the author to the imporance of having an SDLC or an SLA such that the institution using it wil pass HIPAA muster, then tell them, that they use open source it or not secondary to the importance of the quality of their SDLC and support SLA, in order that the institutions who may adopt their software pass an HIPAA audit. This is perfectly reasonable. You might also suggest that he use a slightly better and more platform-independent system than Delphi, as many Delphi components do not port nicely to Kylix. You might also suggest that he consider using a more robust database than MySQL -- PostGreSQL perhaps, one that can handle triggers and stored procedures, as the sheer size of medical records storage problems are legendary . There are a host of technical suggestions you could make that would contribute to the final systems' ability to actually work in the real world.
In your reply, your objection is that This particular law requires vendor support. It wants an externally designatted source that will say "we support this software for technical issues". This could be just about anyone who downloads it and takes the time to learn it. It could be them. It will probably be the people funding them.
So? Why not. Could be you. Are you objecting to the fact that one group wrote it, and any number of others might sell support for it? In that case, what do we do with all those MSCEs that would support the Windows part of it, but did not have any part in developing MS Windows?
There is only one developer registered for the sourceforge project, and while one beta prototype has been released, one would expect that the author intends, by stating he is open sourcing it, to check the code into the sourceforge CVS repository. Granted, CVS is only an SDLC tool, not the SDLC itself, but it bodes well.
What else? Oh, that toy RDBMS and thick Delphi-based Windows client. Well, until we see the proposal, we really have no idea what he's going to do to redevelop the prototype into something ready for Cedar-Sinai, do we
Has been up for years (even if it doesn look very active) and always has good info on.
bundaegi is good for you
The Insight Segmentation and Registration Toolkit (ITK at itk.org) was funded by NIH/National Library of Medicine. From the beginning of the $10 million project, the contract required all code and data to be delivered in open-source form. It defined a consortium of 6 prime contractors (3 academic, 3 commercial) each of whom had a particular role (e.g., architecture, algorithms, software process). It has been a great experience (version 1.4 will be released in two weeks).
You are a bit late. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has been developing a fully integrated suite of applications to run its entire system of hospitals for years, and since it was done by public employees, it is available for free to anyone. It is written in M (or MUMPS) so you always get the source code. This package, called VISTA (used to be called DHCP) runs every aspect of their hospital system, from counting calories in your breakfast to full reporting to Washington, DC, and includes a true paperless medical record. The package has had HIPPA in mind for several years, long before the private sector started becoming concerned with it. And yes, it can bill Medicare as well as insurance companies using DRG's, CPT, etc. In fact, SAIC got a full copy of everything from the VA a few years ago and sold it back to the Department of Defense for $2B (two Billion dollars) and called it CHCS (Composite Health Care System.) If you want to find out more about it go to http://www.hardhats.org/ and all the info is there, including links to get the software from the VA. The package is so good, there are other countries which use it for their national health care system. This suite was driven from the bottom up by the users in each area of the hospital, so the Nurses decided what the Nursing package needed, the Psychiatrists decided what the Psychiatry package needed, etc. Read the site - it is impressive!
FYI - the Soros Foundation is sponsoring a new round of grants for social software development. Open Source Projects are encouraged. For more information check out: http://www.soros.org/ip/item_doc.php?area=18&type= 5&id=158
We're actually funded by 'norsk forskningsrad' (norwegian councel of science), and we're situated at my uni. If you're going to take money, there are a couple of questions you're going to have to ask yourself:
1. What does the grant-giver want in return? While some grants are nearly no-strings attached, in the end there's strings on everything; and no exceptions made..
2. How much more time will you spend writing documentation/progress reports/other stuff purely for whoever gave you money?
3. And more importantly, how will taking a grant change the pace of the project? Will taking money for making something mean you're taking on responsibility you'll not be able to meet with your other responsibilites? When you're taking money for doing something, its going to be *alot* harder putting it away for a month because your wife/gf/dog/actionman turns sick, and your female boss at work gets her period.
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """