Writing Open Source Medical and Nursing Apps?

SteamedPenguin asks: "I am writing a Fick Cardiac Index calculator. It isn't quite finished, but it is almost done. I am bitten by the bug. Writing software, even simple software, in the health care field is fun. I see a good number of Slashdot readers who are either health care practitioners, or claim to be, so I am curious if there are are other nursing and medical tools out there that are written using Open Source languages, and/or are Open Source themselves. Google gives a good number. I am specifically interested in Open Source applications though. I am also interested to hear from people who are writing such software. Can these applications be released under the GPL? Are the algorithms proprietary? What resources are there for people who want to implement these small helper applications?"

Comments

Linux Medicine How-to

[peripatetic_bum]

Being one of authors, I will plug a good resource. Call the Linux Medicine How to. If you see any problems with the how-to, let me know and I will fix it.

It can be read at Linux Medicine How-to

Comments are appreciated

OpenEMR

[bentfork]

I have some MD friends, and I help them with their softwhere on occasion. A couple weeks ago I came across OpenEMR.

It is a OpenSource ( I couldn't find the license, but probably its GPL'd) Electronic Medical Record system. It looks great, I will probably be demoing it for some Doctors in the near future. ( once I get some time to install it myself, check the code etc... )

from the site: www.openemr.net
OpenEMR is a Free, Open Source medical clinic practice management and electronic medical record application. OpenEMR offers

• 1. Practice Management features for patient scheduling, patient demographics;
• 2. Electronic Medical Records, creating an on-line record of your encounters;
• 3. Ability to enter CPT and ICD codes at the end of a patient encounter;
• 4. Advanced reporting capabilities with phpMyAdmin, which is now packaged with OpenEMR;
• 5. Prescription writing capability with ability to email or print prescriptions;
• 6. HL7 support to parse HL7 messages; and
• 7. HIPAA compliance.

Freemed

[BrynM]

Freemed is good. You'll have to dedicate a machine to running it, but all of the people in the office use it from a web browser. It's also heading torward FULL HIPAA compliance. Good luck.

DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU'RE DOING IT PROPERLY

[RMH101]

...for any system that records electronic records of patient data, you're required by law to document, validate and formally test it to within an inch of its life. i do this for a living - this is not the kind of thing you can knock up in your back room and use in a medical setting for very long without getting sued/closed down by the FDA/etc.

If you don't know what 21CFR-11, validation, ER/ES etc are, then you should not be doing this.