BolinOS – open source medical information / web operating system

med-ia writes: BolinOS is also a health-oriented medical information system. The BolinOS project dates of 1995. The final goal is to offer a multimedia web-operating system for health professionals. Open-source has been chosen as a philosophy as it seems to be one of the most pragmatic and efficient peer-reviewing systems for software development (no proof, just good vibes).

In order to reach it, a few strategic steps have been chosen by us, health professionals: development of a clear and solid data-architecture, creation of a generalist online multimedia authoring environment and web operating system, creation of health-related applications working on the system and consolidation of the tool under professional conditions.

Health-professionals are not supposed to be computer professionals , but human-information professionals that may need computer tools to help them, not burden them. We believe that our energy should not be put into the development of obscure computer works that dictate us how we shall heal, but that we shall unite and help each other build a computer-based aid that can readily be used and understood and that will adapt to our know-how, not the opposite.

Let’s face it, BolinOS is not a top-down approach on computer integration in complex information environments, it is more the result of random thinking on the work of health-professionals and there translation to online computer systems. Have fun, the list expands day after day (check and yours on the BolinOS website, under the “health-oriented” section):

• Computer shall help us heal better (this seems logical).
• The computer shall not force us to adapt our know-how, it must help us refine it (we are not computer scientists, we are health-professionals!!!).
• Computers shall help us enhance our work quality since we are happier when we heal (the sky is not so blue for most of us, I should have done insurer or rockstar).
• The cost of computers shall not overwhelm other needs (is the new pet-scan or cafeteria more important than this fantastic-looking ultra-mega-maxi-terahertz computer server?).
• One hour healing is better than one our knowing how to click on weird buttons that triggers random cryptic alerts (remember that “error x1222a-cff23.344 type c please contact the system administrator, the one that’s on vacation, sorry your holidays have been cancelled until restoration of system hard-disk reboot backup thank you”).
• Computers must not be black boxes (I shall be able, as a health-professional, to easily share my knowledge on the network).
• Health-related computer work shall be complementary to personal use (I know how to get my personal email, I don’t need to do it differently for my professional one).
• The information must follow the health-professional not the opposite (wow, I need to go to building C because this is how things have been decided, why?).
• I can’t do this because my computer specialist says I can’t (but why can I do it at home then?).
• I want to express myself!! (nobody never listens to me)
• My patients are enthusiastic when it comes to pay the price of this fantastic web-managment system (or are they really?).
• Developping countries must be able to share our Internet based medical tools and participate with us to develop them further (why should our economical power make us better professionals?).

…

Today the platform is only used by a few groups. They are developing and refining what has been done in order to have an even more stable and efficient open-source platform. We shall be happy if you too, health professional or not, take part in this adventure.🙂

Here are a few historical milestones until this first installer version of BolinOS 3: creation of a solid and open data-architecture (1995 – Sqeleton 1.0 – http://wild.ch) design of group-oriented tools based on the architecture (1999 – Sqeleton 2.0 – http://poinch.ch) design of a complete platform for multimedia authoring and web-operation software (january 2000 – BolinOS 1.0) stabilisation and fine-tuning of the system on open-source standards Apache/PHP/mySQL (april march 2000 – BolinOS 1.5) complete rewriting of the source code (january 2001 – BolinOS 2.0) completion of basic set of administration and user-tools and complete code rewriting (september 2002 – BolinOS 3.0) completion of a simple installer to facilitate open distribution (january 2003 – BolinOS 3.0), yahooooooo!!!!!😉

We are having lots of fun developing and using the BolinOS, hope you will too!

bolinos.net“