GNUmed

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GNUmed practice software
GNUmed Logo
Developed by GNUmed community
Latest release 0.2.8.8
OS Cross-platform
Genre Medical practice management software
Website www.gnumed.org

GNUmed is a free software/open source medical practice management software for Unix-like systems (BSD, Linux, and UNIX systems), Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and other platforms. The GNUmed community is busy building a medical software package that will be open source, free, secure, respectful of patient privacy, based on open standards , flexible, fully featured. networked (client-server architecture), easy to use, multi platform and multi lingual.

GNUmed is based on highly respected and tested third party projects such as free software/open source DBMS PostgreSQL and is written mostly in Python. It is supported by a graphical user interface (GUI) based on WxPython.

The GNUmed practice management is developed and maintained by an open community of developers.

Contents

[edit] History

The first version of the GNUmed was created by Horst Herb. When Herb ceased active development, the development of GNUmed was picked up by Karsten Hilbert who took over as project leader and partly overhauled the project.

Karsten Hilbert was not alone in his efforts. Several other developers from all around the world joined the team and helped helped ot one time or the other: Syan Tan, Ian Haywood, Hilmar Berger, Sebastian Hilbert, Carlos Moro, Michael Bonert, Rcihard Terry, Tony Lembke and many more. While some concentrated on coding many more tremendously helped by creating execellent documentation (Jim Busser) or submitted other valuable comments.

The name was initially chosen to give credit to the GNU project and GNUmed's obvious connection to the medical profession. The logo depicts a Gnu as a reference to the GNU project accompanied by a Python as a reference to the programming language as well as to the medical profession.

At the time, GNUmed was just another open source project aiming to become an alternative to the etsablished EMRs. It has since evolved to rival other EMRs in terms of functionality and performance.[citation needed]

[edit] License

Main article: GPL

The License under which the GNUmed software is distributed grants the recipients of a computer program the following rights:

  • the right to run the program, for any desired purpose.
  • the right to study how the program works, and modify it. (Access to the source code is a precondition for this)
  • the right to redistribute copies.
  • the right to improve the program, and release the improvements to the public. (Access to the source code is a precondition for this)

[edit] Usage

GNUmed is primarily used to manage electronic medical records. It provides means of archiving paper records as is as well as collecting metadata on these records.

[edit] Features

GNUmed supports a variety of features, many implemented as plugins which extend the core functionality. These can range a medical paper record archiving system to vaccination status handling. A constantly updated list of features is provides in GNUmed's documentation system.

The Wiki features a section called WhatCanIActuallyDOWithGNUmedToday which gives a broader overview. Each release adds a distinct set of polished features.

By making use of GNUmed's interface 3rd party software can interact with GNUmed to make use of its advanced features.

[edit] External links

Free software Portal

[edit] Further reading

  • Hilbert, Sebastian. Open Source: GNUmed Befundarchiv. Deutsches Ärzteblatt.  Article on GNUmed's document archive, can be viewed on aerzteblatt.de here
  • Hilbert, Sebastian. Freie Software in der Arztpraxis: Open Source statt Blackbox. Deutsches Ärzteblatt.  Article on GNUmed and FOSS in a medical office, can be viewed on aerzteblatt.de here
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