List of open-source health software

The following is a list of software packages and applications licensed under an open-source license or in the public domain for use in the health care industry.

Diagnostic software

• Specvis is a free desktop application designed for visual field examination in humans. It is written in the Java programming language ensuring unrestricted portability on any personal computer or laptop. It has easy to use graphical user interface and does not require special computer or programming skills. It was developed by Piotr Dzwiniel at Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology PAS.

Public health and biosurveillance

• Epi Info is public domain statistical software for epidemiology developed by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• Spatiotemporal Epidemiological Modeler is a tool, originally developed at IBM Research, for modeling and visualizing the spread of infectious diseases.

Dental management and patient record

• Open Dental is the first open-source dental management package with very broad capabilities on record management, patient scheduling and dental office management.

Electronic health or medical record

• CottageMed is a cross-platform electronic medical record system based on FileMaker. CottageMed is released under the GPL
• FreeMED is a practice management and electronic and computer records system. It allows the tracking of medical data, in detail, with preservation not just of the diagnosis but the reasons for medical encounters. FreeMED is released under the GPL
• GaiaEHR is a modern open source electronic health record developed using PHP and Ext JS
• GNUmed is a WxPython application that uses PostgreSQL
• GNU Health is a centralized, highly scalable health and hospital information system
• Hospital OS Open source hospital information system in Thai
• HOSxP is a hospital information system, including Electronic health record (EHR), in use in over 70 hospitals across Thailand.
• Mirth is an open source cross-platform HL7 interface engine that enables bi-directional sending of HL7 messages between systems and applications over multiple transports.
• openEHR is an open standard specification in health informatics that describes the management and storage, retrieval and exchange of health data in electronic health records (EHRs) following a two-level modelling paradigm.
• OpenEMR is a PHP-based ^[1] electronic medical record (EMR) system.
• OpenMRS is an enterprise EMR framework. Extensible and scalable EMR based on Java.
• OSCAR McMaster is an electronic medical record (EMR) application. The billing component of the software is specialized for the needs of the Canadian health-care providers.
• THIRRA is a web-based EHR application designed primarily for narrowband. It includes communicable diseases biosurveillance feature. THIRRA uses PHP5, CodeIgniter and PostgreSQL.
• VistA – Veterans Administrations integrated electronic health record system available for non-governmental use as OSEHRA VistA or OpenVista or WorldVistA.
• ZEPRS is a web-based patient record system.
• SmartCare is a C# windows based EHR application, with working installations in Zambia, Ethiopia and South Africa. It is designed with the state of poor connectivity in developing countries in mind, making use of SmartCards to store patient level information. Its core development team is based in Zambia where the Government has adopted it as its national EHR.

Medical practice management software

• ClearHealth covers the five major areas of practice operations: scheduling, billing, EMR, HIPAA Security and accounts receivable.
• FreeMED is a practice management and electronic and computer records system. It allows the tracking of medical data, in detail, with preservation not just of the diagnosis but the reasons for medical encounters. FreeMED is released under the LGPL GNU license. FreeMED is an HIPAA compliant FOSS practice management system that handles billing.
• GNU Health is a centralized, highly scalable health and hospital information system
• MedinTux is a French medical practice management system, with a web interface as well as a desktop one, that has been initially to manage a hospital emergency department. Being very modular, it has been extended to run also many different smaller practices.
• Open Dental Dental practice management
• OpenEMR is a medical practice management, electronic medical records, prescription writing, and medical billing application.
• OpenHospital is an electronic medical record system meant for small rural hospitals

Health system management

• DHIS is a district health management information system and data warehouse
• HRHIS is a human resource for health information system for management of human resources for health developed by University of Dar es Salaam college of information and communication technology, Department of Computer Science and engineering, for Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (Tanzania) and funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)

Imaging/visualization

• Advanced Simulation Library^[2] is a hardware accelerated multiphysics simulation software
• Drishti is a volumetric visualisation package for viewing computer tomography data. Able to import DICOM image stacks.
• Endrov Image and data viewer and editor
• ITK segmentation and registration toolkit
• InVesalius 3D medical imaging reconstruction software
• ITK-SNAP Interactive software for 3D image navigation, annotation and automatic segmentation
• Ginkgo CADx Cross-platform open source DICOM viewer and dicomizer.
• MITK - Medical Imaging Interaction Toolkit for interactive medical image processing.
• Orthanc – Lightweight, RESTful DICOM server for medical imaging.
• OsiriX – 3D DICOM medical viewer for Mac OS X. Complete DICOM Viewer with DICOM network support
• ParaView large-scale visualization tool
• 3DSlicer Platform for medical image visualization and algorithm development. DICOM support, segmentation and registration, Diffusion MRI processing, and image guided surgery support.
• Voreen volume rendering engine—a library for visually exploring volume data sets. DICOM is supported and Voreen is used in medical visualization as well as for visualizing electron microscopy data.
• VTK visualization toolkit
• Xebra (medical imaging software)
• GIMIAS workflow-oriented environment focused on biomedical image computing and simulation

Medical information systems

• Caisis is a web-based information system for the storage and analysis of cancer patient data intended to bridge the gap between clinic and research
• cTAKES ("clinical Text Analysis Knowledge Extraction Software") is a natural language processing system for extracting information from electronic medical record clinical free-text, an Apache TLP since 2013, developed by the Mayo Clinic and others

Research

• LabKey Server is an extensible platform for integrating, analyzing and sharing all types of biomedical research data. It provides secure, web-based access to research data and includes a customizable data processing pipeline.

Mobile devices

• Ushahidi Allows people to submit crisis information through text messaging using a mobile phone, email or web form. Displays information in map view.
• Glucosio Allows people with diabetes to track their glucose levels while supporting diabetes research via Android or iOS mobile apps.

Out-of-the-box distributions

• Bahmni
• BioLinux
• Debian-Med
• Ubuntu-Med

Interoperability testing

• The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) tasked MITRE with developing an open-source program called Cypress to test EHR software for compliance with the Meaningful Use Stage 2 Clinical Quality Measures.^[3]
• The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) and MITRE developed an open-source program called Laika to test EHR software for compliance with CCHIT interoperability data standards, including the HITSP C32 XML and HL7 v2 Lab messages.

See also

• Electronic medical record
• eHealth
• Gello Expression Language
• Health informatics
• Hospital information systems
• List of freeware health software
• List of biomedical cybernetics software
• List of open-source bioinformatics software
• List of open-source health hardware
• mHealth

References