Hart is a medical software technology company that improves the ways in which people inside and outside of the industry access and engage with health data.
Founded in 2012, the startup develops HartOS, an API platform that allows healthcare providers and their vendors and partners to use health data from multiple computer systems in a HIPAA-compliant manner in a range of digital formats. These may include medical records, hospital information, radiology information, laboratory information, picture archiving, emergency department, and other systems.
Last month, Hart became a Gold member of The Linux Foundation. Here, Hart Founder Mo Alkady tells us more about his company; how open source is contributing to changes in the healthcare industry; and how they participate in the open source community.
Linux.com: How and why do you use Linux and open source?
Mo Alkady: Utilizing the Linux kernel is crucial to our servers running CentOS. It’s a no-brainer; the open source community has helped tipped the scales as giants continue to open up licensing under Apache, in order to help and maintain their own ecosystems.
Linux.com: Why did you increase your commitment to The Linux Foundation?
Mo Alkady: In an ever changing world, contributions and support of the open source community are more crucial than ever to help expedite the developments we make as a technological society.
Linux.com: What interesting or innovative trends in the healthcare industry are you witnessing and what role do Linux and open source play in them?
Mo Alkady: The electronic medical record is crucial to the advancement of healthcare around the world, and we are starting to see the healthcare industry look to specific solutions in the technology sector, looking to adopt newer standards by vendors; if we can work to build an open source standard, this enables and further lowers the barriers of entry for those to help advance the medical space.
Linux.com: How is your company participating in that innovation?
Mo Alkady: We joined as a contributing body to the Open API initiative. For us, we believe building the proper frameworks to enable others to share data is the key for vast improvements of the technical variety to be pushed forward in healthcare.
Linux.com: How has participating in the Linux and open source communities changed your company?
Mo Alkady: The open source community is key to our culture; our values involve ingenuity, craftsmanship and change.
