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.

Public health and biosurveillance

• Epi Info is public domain statistical software for epidemiology developed by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.^[1]
• Spatiotemporal Epidemiological Modeler is a tool, originally developed at IBM Research, for modelings and visualizing the spread of infectious diseases. It is maintained by the Eclipse Foundation and available under terms of the Eclipse Public License.^[2][3]

Electronic records and medical practice management

Health system management

• iHRIS is an integrated Human Resource Information System developed by IntraHealth International under USAID-funded CapacityPlus project and deployed in more than 20 countries in the world.^[45] iHRIS is distributed under the GNU GPL.^[46]
• DHIS is a district health management information system and data warehouse. DHIS2 is released under the BSD license.^[47]
• 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).

Prescriptions and medicines management

• OpenEP is a suite of medicines management apps that improve the safety and efficiency of prescribing and medicines management. It is available under the GNU AGPL.^[48]

Disease management

• Breathing Games is a series of research-backed, co-created games to prevent, diagnose and treat chronic respiratory diseases. They are released under the Peer Production licence.^[49]
• Nightscout is a collection of software tools, including mobile clients, to enable DIY cloud-based continuous glucose monitoring “…for informational and educational purposes.”^[50] Individual components are available under various open-source licenses, including the GNU GPL,^[51] GNU AGPL,^[52] MIT License,^[53] and BSD licenses.^[54]

Imaging/visualization

• CamBA is a collection of neuroimaging pipelines distributed under the GNU GPL.^[55]
• dcm4che is a DICOM based collection of Java applications and utilities for the healthcare enterprise. It is licensed under the GNU LGPL, GNU GPL, and Mozilla Public License.^[56]
• Drishti is a volumetric visualization package for viewing computer tomography data. Able to import DICOM image stacks. It is available under the MIT license.^[57]
• Endrov Image and data viewer and editor. It is available under the BSD license.^[58]
• GIMIAS is a workflow-oriented environment focused on biomedical image computing and simulation. It is available under a BSD-style license.^[59]
• Ginkgo CADx Cross-platform open source DICOM viewer and dicomizer. It is available under the GNU LGPL.^[60]
• Horos is a DICOM medical image viewer. It is available under the GNU LGPL.^[61]
• ImageVis3D volume rendering software for interactive visualization. It is available under the MIT license.^[62]
• Insight Segmentation and Registration Toolkit (ITK) v4.0+ is released under the Apache license.^[63]
• InVesalius 3D medical imaging reconstruction software. It is available under the GNU GPL.^[64]
• ITK-SNAP Interactive software for 3D image navigation, annotation, and automatic segmentation. It is available under the GNU GPL.^[65]
• MITK Medical Imaging Interaction Toolkit for interactive medical image processing. It is available under a BSD-style license.^[66]
• Orthanc – Lightweight, RESTful DICOM server for medical imaging. It is available under the GNU GPL with OpenSSL exception; plugins may be released under other licenses.^[67]
• OsiriX 3D DICOM medical viewer for Mac OS X. Complete DICOM Viewer with DICOM network support.
• ParaView large-scale visualization tool. It is available under the BSD license.^[68]
• 3DSlicer Platform for medical image visualization and algorithm development. DICOM support, segmentation and registration, Diffusion MRI processing, and image guided surgery support. It is available under a BSD-style license.^[69]
• 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. It is available under the GNU GPL.^[70]
• VTK is a visualization toolkit available under the BSD license.^[71]
• Xebra is a medical imaging thin client available under the GNU GPL.^[72]

Medical information systems

• Bika is an ISO 17025 laboratory information management system (LIMS) that combines web content management and workflow processing. It is available under the GNU GPL.^[73]
• 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. It is available under the GNU GPL.^[74]
• 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 top level project (TLP) since 2013, developed by the Mayo Clinic and others. It is available under the Apache license.^[75]
• MEDIC Client Registry RI is the Mohawk College MARC-HI/MEDIC Client Registry EMPI Implementation. It is available under the Apache license.^[76]

Research

• ADAM is a genomics analysis platform with a focus on scalability and interoperability. It is available under the Apache license.^[77]
• Bcbio is community developed genomics system that handles the data processing component of sequencing analysis. It is available under the MIT license.^[78]
• Galaxy is a web platform for data-intensive biology using geographically-distributed supercomputers.^[79]
• i2b2 is a National Institutes of Health-funded informatics framework for clinical genomics researchers. It is available under the i2b2 Software License.^[80]
• 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. It is distributed under the Apache license.^[81]
• Open cancer is a cancer data management aiming to provide open data models, clinical pathways, prognostic scoring, and auto-identification of trial patients.
• Wregex is an amino acid motif searching software for weighted regular expressions. It is available under the GNU GPL.^[82]
• Phoenix CTMS is an integrated CTMS/CDMS and subject registry platform, available under LGPL.^[83]

Mobile devices

• Glucosio allows people with diabetes to track their glucose levels while supporting diabetes research via Android or iOS mobile apps. The apps are released under the GNU GPL.^[84]
• Medic Mobile combines SMS messaging, data collection, and analytics for health workers and health systems in hard-to-reach areas with or without internet connectivity. The web app is available under the Apache License.^[85]
• OpenAPS is a set of development tools and documentation to support a DIY implementation of an artificial pancreas for people with Type 1 Diabetes. Common setups include the interfacing of CGMs, Insulin Pumps, and Raspberry Pi devices. It is released under the MIT license, but compatible medical devices are proprietary.^[86]
• Ushahidi allows people to submit crisis information through text messaging using a mobile phone, email or web form. Displays information in map view. It is released under the GNU Affero General Public License, but some libraries use different licenses.^[87]

Out-of-the-box distributions

• BioLinux
• Debian-Med is a Debian Pure Blend for use in medical and biomedical settings.^[88]
• Ubuntu-Med

Interoperability

• Cypress is maintained by MITRE Corporation with funding from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC).^[89] It is used to test EHR software for compliance with the Meaningful Use Stage 2 Clinical Quality Measures.^[90] Cypress is distributed under the Apache license.^[89]
• Laika was developed by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) and MITRE to test EHR software for compliance with CCHIT interoperability data standards, including the HITSP C32 XML and HL7 v2 Lab messages. Laika is available under the Apache license.^[91]
• 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. It is available under the Mozilla Public License.^[92]

Specifications

• Continuity of Care Document
• Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) is a Health Level 7 interoperability specification that defines JSON and XML data formats and a RESTful API.^[93][94] It is available under the CC0 license.^[95]
• 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 modeling paradigm. The OpenEHR base specification is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.^[96]

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

Further reading