Open Source Public Health Software through Lean Methods

Collaborative Software Initiative

The link above is a project that might be interesting to those of you working in “Lean Software”… or those who afraid of problems in our collective ability to track the spread of infectious diseases.

From their press release:

Collaborative Software Initiative (CSI), the company that brings like-minded organizations together to work on collaborative software at a fraction of the cost, today announced the release of the first open source, web-based infectious disease reporting and management system.

The system is being built with Lean methods:

When deployed, UT-NEDSS project will directly contribute to the prevention of sickness and death by effectively collecting, identifying, tracking and trending information gathered about infectious diseases and bioterrorism attacks. Additionally, this unique partnership is providing lessons for public health informatics on:

Open source software best practices

Lean Software Development practices

Building an open source community for a public health product

Contractual relations between public health entities and a commercial open source software company that support long-term product sustainability

I think we can all hope that systems like this can lead to better public health.

“We are excited by the promise that this collaborative approach offers to our state,” said Dr. Robert Rolfs, MD, State Epidemiologist, State of Utah Department of Health. “This system meets our needs by making it easy for our doctors and nurses across a variety of counties to better protect people’s health by detecting and preventing disease.”

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