conferences | speakers | series

Open source is not only for geeks and idealists in the (danish) health sector

home

Open source is not only for geeks and idealists in the (danish) health sector
FOSDEM 2015

A presentation of the telemedicine project OpenTele, and the 4S organization behind it.

We will talk about the impact OpenTele has had for the many conical ill and pregnant who has used it in the pilot phase, and what the (open source) community can use OpenTele and the related 4S toolbox for.

We would like to make a presentation of the open source OpenTele project and what it has done for people in Denmark, as well as shortly introduce the toolbox of open source modules that are under the wings of the 4S organization.

We do this to increase the awareness of our project in the open source community, we want to extend our community beyond the limited reach it currently has, open for contributions on all levels, and for letting people with interest in the health sector know that there is a free alternative that they can promote and use in their own projects, but also in their local communities by cooperating with medical professionals.

4S

4S is an open source ecosystem for telemedicine providers and consumers. Members include the National eHealth Authority (who is responsible for setting the national standards for telemedicine in Denmark), three out of the five Danish regions (who operate all public hospitals and secondary care), municipalities (primary health care and social care), software providers, Aarhus University and the Alexandra Institute. The two latter are currently the operators of 4S.

Open Tele

OpenTele is an open source project that is governed by 4S and released under an Apache 2.0 license - it is in a transition phase from different pilot projects to production mode, and going from the company that originally developed it, into the 4S open source eco system.

OpenTele is currently being used for people with diabetes, COPD and pregnancies with medical complications - allowing medical staff to monitor patients remotely, and empowering patients with respect to their own illness or pregnancy, giving them a better understanding of their issues and the ability to be proactive with respect to their own treatment.

The Toolbox

A number of separate components are being developed, either as spin-offs from OpenTele or as separate components.

We are a couple of people that are currently working on making a device communication module written in C++ with ports to Ubuntu and Android for talking with Continua medical devices as well as devices using proprietary formats.

It's possible to use our code either from html5 sites running in the app, or to build new apps from the code, this can be used in other projects that wishes to have integration with measurement devices, either as medical applications or health/fitness aware application and of course all the things we didn't even dream about yet.

The devices that this component will provide easy communication with are things like weight scales, blood pressure monitors, puls-oxymeters, blood glucose monitors etc.

Speakers: Mike Kristoffersen