Free/Libre Open Source Software in Health Care: A Review

Abstract

ObjectivesTo assess the current state of the art and the contribution of Free/Libre Open Source Software in health care (FLOSS-HC).MethodsThe review is based on a narrative review of the scientific literature as well as sources in the context of FLOSS-HC available through the Internet. All relevant available sources have been integrated into the MedFLOSS database and are freely available to the community.ResultsThe literature review reveals that publications about FLOSS-HC are scarce. The largest part of information about FLOSS-HC is available on dedicated websites and not in the academic literature. There are currently FLOSS alternatives available for nearly every specialty in health care. Maturity and quality varies considerably and there is little information available on the percentage of systems that are actually used in health care delivery.ConclusionsThe global impact of FLOSS-HC is still very limited and no figures on the penetration and usage of FLOSS-HC are available. However, there has been a considerable growth in the last 5 to 10 years. While there where only few systems available a decade ago, in the meantime many systems got available (e.g., more than 300 in the MedFLOSS database). While FLOSS concepts play an important role in most IT related sectors (e.g., telecommunications, embedded devices) the healthcare industry is lagging behind this trend.

Quality-based bottom-up design of reference architecture applied to Healthcare Integrated Information Systems

“…According to [32], OpenEMR [20] and PatientOS [22] present a 90% and 92% usage respectively. OpenEMR is a basic Electronic Medical Record (EMR) management Web-based system, offering also basic HIS services for distributed clients, different platforms, assuring portability through Internet protocols, supporting also satellite networks; interoperability with HL7 is also supported; Care2x [23] is very similar to OpenEMR, the only difference is the interoperability component in Data Layer.…”

“…Our approach then stands as a middle ground between top-down and bottom-up approaches. The RA design process is applied to a case study in the Healthcare Integrated Information Systems (HIS) domain, focusing on free-use software of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) [32]. The HIS domain is particularly relevant to be studied because there are no SPLs used in practice; many factors such as the lack of standards in HIS architectures and for interoperability of medical records, besides the mistrust about security w.r.t.…”

The Impact of Open Development Initiatives in Lower‐ and Middle Income Countries: A Review of the Literature

“…There were many examples of improved learning outcomes through the use of OERs (Zeng et al, 2014;Kaneene et al, 2013). Adoption rates of open source software were also revealed, usually in the health and library domains, and confirmed lower cost as main driver for choosing OSS (Karopka et al, 2014;Aminpour et al, Scopus ICTD 2014). Without reflection on why or why not openness makes a difference it is challenging to draw conclusions from these studies.…”

Open-source LIMS in Vietnam: The path toward sustainability and host country ownership

“…PEPFAR's Sustainability Agenda includes country ownership, local leadership and appropriate national policies for successful program implementation [16]. Factors linked to the sustainability of open-source projects include presence of developer and user communities, reliable release cycle, governance, modular architecture, software documentation, and professional support services [17]. Open-source projects with sponsorship and reliable financial support have demonstrated improved project success metrics [18].…”