This document discusses open source software and its applications in public health. It describes open source as emphasizing freedom to use, modify, and distribute source code without necessarily being free of cost. Several open source license models are mentioned. The document then outlines benefits and challenges of open source software, and provides examples of open source applications that are used in public health, including Biocaster for infectious disease detection, TranStat for estimating disease transmission, and Sahana for disaster management.

1. Taha Kass-Hout, MD, MS Nicolás di Tada October 2008 Using Open-Source Software for Public Health

2. OPEN SOURCE AND FREE SOFTWARE “ Open Source” was coined to avoid the confusion with economic context Emphasis is on freedom to use, modify and distribute the source code Open Source does not mean free “ Free” refers to no cost and the freedom to use the software There are several license models

3. LICENSE MODELS

4. BUSINESS MODEL Where does a commercial company fit here? Build and tie together several open source packages Provide tested open source solutions and customer support

5. OPEN SOURCE BENEFITS

6. OPEN SOURCE CHALLENGES May lack a complete documentation No risk but reputation in releasing a product that is not production ready No support contract and the creator has no obligation to provide any support The project might get abandoned

7. WHAT TO LOOK FOR? Commercial companies giving implementations, consulting and support Community activity Project history and reputation Success stories Documentation

8. OPEN SOURCE SAMPLE APPLICATIONS IN PUBLIC HEALTH

9. BIOCASTER A collaborative research project Infectious diseases and chemicals detection and tracking Feature extraction Open source and multi-lingual taxonomy (version 2.0 released) KML files available for use in Google Earth New links to GoPubMed http://biocaster.nii.ac.jp

10. TRANSTAT Test for the presence of human-to-human transmission (or animal-to-animal in veterinary settings) Estimate epidemiologic characteristics of the disease https://www.epimodels.org/midas/transtat.do

11. MIRTH: HL7 INTERFACE Platform neutral Evolving GUI interface Bidirectional messaging Remote configuration Mirth hardware solutions (Pico, Appliances) Uses open source a light-weight messaging framework (Mule) http://www.mirth.org

12. INSTEDD: RIFF AND RNA Riff: Collaboration platform RNA: Human collaboration and machine learning for early disease detection and prediction http://riff.instedd.org

13. WEKA A collection of machine learning algorithms for data mining in Java Tools for data pre-processing, classification, regression, clustering, association rules, and visualization http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~ml/weka

14. PENTAHO Reporting, analysis, dashboard, data mining and workflow. http://www.pentaho.com

15. CABIG™: NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE BIOMEDICAL INFORMATICS GRID A model for large scale collaborative development All new projects must be open access and open source Compatibility Guidelines (Legacy, Bronze, Silver and Gold) assure that applications meet minimum interoperability requirements. Shared data standards repository, sharing and reusing of object classes for applications across the grid. Large suite of applications in development https://cabig.nci.nih.gov

16. SAHANA DISASTER MANAGEMENT Sahana = “relief” in Sinhalese Person registry GIS Mapping Event communications Some support provided by Google’s open source initiative http://cvs.opensource.lk/index.php

17. Q&A

18. THANK YOU! Taha Kass-Hout, MD, MS http://www.instedd.org [email_address] http://taha.instedd.org Nicolás di Tada http://www.manas.com.ar [email_address] http://weblogs.manas.com.ar/ndt/

19. REFERENCES Open Source License References http://www.opensource.org/licenses http://openacs.org/about/licensing/open-source-licensing Open Source References http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/open-source-life-how-the-open-movement-will-change-everything.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source http://www.opensource.org/ Open Source and Public Health References Open Source Development for Public Health: A Primer with Examples of Existing Enterprise Ready Open Source Applications in Turner (2006) http://www.ibiblio.org/pjones/wiki/index.php/Open_Source_Software_for_Public_Health http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_healthcare_software http://www.epha.org/a/320 A Quick Survey of Open Source Software for Public Health Organizations in Mirabito and Kass-Hout (2007)