Open-source Software Fills Niche Needs in Medicine

Should you join the open-source software movement? A session at the recent 2011 Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery (CARS) congress in Berlin addressed a question that legions of IT and developer types in medical facilities around the world have pondered themselves when they discovered their software didn't do what they needed it to do. The presenter considered it a great idea, actually, and outlined a way for interested medical researchers to try their hand at open-source software development.

And why not? Open-source has gone mainstream. It's abundant, it's available, and in the research community it seems everyone is using it. Even corporations have gotten into the game -- Dell is now offering a workstation with an open-source software option. Medical IT people around the world have built applications successfully for their departments, while others have tweaked someone else's open-source application to make their stuff run better.

With luck and pluck you could become something of a rock star in your interventional radiology or surgery department when you roll out custom-designed software that runs your robots perfectly but didn't have to be built from scratch, according to Kevin Cleary, PhD, who knows a thing or two about the process.

With time your software could even become the go-to standard in your medical niche, bringing you new users and a measure of fame -- though not usually fortune. At the least you will free yourself from having to redevelop the same software every time a graduate student who writes a program leaves your department.