Advice for an Open Source Development Grant? 149
IgD asks: "My colleagues and I are developing an open source medical records system. A senior supervisor approached us and let us know a third party is offering a decent amount of money in the form of a grant for any legitimate medical research project. We were all but promised the money if we could come up with a proposal. Has anyone in the Slashdot community received a grant for open source software development? Are there any good examples of such a grant available? How could one measure the results of open source development for publication?"
what's the goal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:what's the goal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on, they are not very different goals. You can get the job done while having an open source product (and no money). I mean, have you seen the linux kernel? I does get the job done. You could also have the job done and get money while being closed source. You could also have open source and get money, just look at redhat, mysql, etc, etc.. So no, they are nod different goals.
Re:what's the goal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:what's the goal? (Score:2)
Re:what's the goal? (Score:1)
Re:what's the goal? (Score:4, Informative)
Not necessarily. They can get the job done and have open source code. That would probably depend on any stipulations for the grant.
As for the money, I don't know the specifics of their project, but the money could be used to buy computers, equipment, etc. I work for a university based hospital, and have dealt a bit with research proposals, grants, etc. The grants I have dealt with are typically used to pay for things that come up in the course of research, or buys things that the department might not be able to buy on it's own. It might also be used to pay someone's salary, but I'm guessing they're not looking to get rich. As far as who is providing the grant, my guess would be that they want to do a Netscape/Mozilla kind of thing, or they might want make money on installing the systems (service and hardware).
I wish them luck
A full open hospital package already done by DVA (Score:2, Informative)
Re:MUMPS? (Score:2)
MUMPS is very used in Healthcare industry. It's from before the internet.
Intersystems is a company that sells you the MUMPS set (database, language...) and runs on *nix, Windows and Linux (on Linux since 1998, IIRC). Intersystems sells it as a Post-relational Database System. They usualy advertise on Linux magazines, with an image of a 1/2 truck + 1/2 racing car. Or 1/2 cargo animal + 1/2 cheetah.
MUMPS has also bee
Why should this be any different? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why should this be any different? (Score:1)
Re:Why should this be any different? (Score:2, Informative)
I've been on grant review boards, and being open source is big positive factor. Grant review boards are often concerned that 1) you aren't duplicating the wheel 2) that the software that you produce won't be orphaned once the grant runs out. There is also the "why aren't you funding this via venture capital" question.
Re:Why should this be any different? (Score:2)
Lots of funding agencies have reasons to want to fund open source or free software. Government agencies, NIH Institutes and Offices for example, aren't generally concerned with the software being sold for profit. They're concerned with the software being demonstrably useful in promoting public health and basic medical research. Preferably the kind of demonstrable utility that looks good in the annua
A good idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:A good idea (Score:1)
Re:A good idea (Score:2, Informative)
Has been up for years (even if it doesn look very active) and always has good info on.
Open Source Medical Software (Score:3, Informative)
Have you check www.linuxmednews.com?
There are lots of projects in progress currently, perhaps you could work with one of those and help them out?
Alric
Yes, I went this route once, was not successful (Score:1, Interesting)
Nobody uses Electronic Medical Records (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nobody uses Electronic Medical Records (Score:1, Informative)
Wrong! US Gov(Veterans Affairs) and Many Univs (Score:3, Informative)
Many university hospitals and other large hospitals all have some sort of electronic record system, and many are converting to an all electronic system.
I am not aware of any that are open source, Mo
Re:Wrong! US Gov(Veterans Affairs) and Many Univs (Score:2)
The source for VistA, the system used by the VA, is about 99.9% public domain. Hard to read, but freely available. Check out the Hard Hats site [hardhats.org] for more info.
Thanks (Score:2)
Like writing any grant I would bet. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Like writing any grant I would bet. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've often thought that a good open source team of about thirty individuals including a half dozen subject matter experts, a couple good technical writers and half a dozen programmers could kick some serious butt in this market, establish an inter-operative database standard, either run it platform independent, or take advantage of some pretty powerful, yet inexpensive software like Web Objects and dominate the market within two years. Of course this third party you are talking about is probably interested in such a proposal, thus the offer. It's pretty amazing actually how many folks are wading around aimlessly in this market. Big players like GE, Siemens, IBM etc... are without any direction or focus on this problem and the market payoff could be relatively big if you properly market this to select members of government who are absolutely desperate to reduce the cost of medicine.
WebObjects? Noooo! (Score:2)
Whoooaaaa there, boy! Whatever, and I do mean whatever you choose as your platform, let it be
Not because the idea as such isn't a good one. The philosophy behind WO is really nice (basically, imitate an application even when developing), after all, it was the NeXt guys that came up wi
Re:WebObjects? Noooo! (Score:2)
To specifically respond to your point: It doesn't scale. At all.
I will state simply that the DOD is using Web Objects to manage all of the medical history and data of their employees including Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, Semper Fi as well as many
Re:WebObjects? Noooo! (Score:2)
Apple's own applestore runs on WO, and it gave the classic WO error "No instance available" upon like every fifth request until they added a whole server room just to drive the store.
Yes, I've seen some sites doing ok with WO, it is possible if you bypass some of the core functionality, and especially if you stick to Direct Actions. But then, you are not using WO, you are writin
SHR&D Grants (Score:1)
As far as know, the company has to be incorporated in Canada, b
Re:SHR&D Grants (Score:1)
I don't know if you count this as a grant but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I've received sponsorship money from some pretty [boeing.com] big [abbott.com] companies for the development (or augmentation) of an open-source project [rongage.org] I wrote.
Now, this wasn't a "here is some money, go write something useful" type of sponsorship, but more along the lines of "we like your work but need a certain feature added. Here is the money, add the feature".
It probably doesn't help you though, since they (the money) came to me...
Damn, fine work (Score:5, Informative)
My most successful string of open source solutions involved a small break with an audio-video company. I set up a small Linux network, with a small CRM that was based on, believe it or not, a web based PHP driven "application" that I designed to catalogue my DVDs, VHS tapes, CDs, games, books, and comic books. mySQL is the backend, Apache its "OS". I added a few useful modules from popular CRMs that I found on Sourceforge. All of this meant nothing to my client, they were only happy that it fit their every need (they were managing customer data, billing, scheduling, and reports across a series of applications like Excel and Quick Books Pro, and good old pen and paper). Needless to say, not only was my solution extremely scalable and cheap, but it removed the hassle of having to have a file cabinet handy and three or four programs. All they did was click a little link on their KDE panel, and up came Mozilla and their portal to my program.
They quickly refferred me to their lawyer's office, my own dentist, and another small business that specialized in boat repair. I quickly made about $12,000 in my spare time, and not one bit of the software I used cost anything. I have yet to return to any of their sites to fix anything since, and this was over a year ago. The only thing I did was give them each a call when Redhat made RHN available so that they could sign up and have their systems updated for them remotely, for very little $$$. The circle of Linux business life eventually brought money back to Red Hat, whom's OS I used for free as an ISO download, at all of these sites.
You gotta love it.
Re:I don't know if you count this as a grant but.. (Score:2)
doc/licence says LGPL.
But it also has a vague preamble that adds additional terms to the LGPL, namely that derivative works authors must distribute the work back to you ( and thereby release the source to you too.) The plain LGPL does not require this.
readme says that it is a "commercial open-source" project that can be licenced for $99. This is confusing.
It would be good if this could be cleared up. I would recommend that you make it LGPL. Ask a lawyer
But what is Rongage about ? (Score:2)
Open Source Reseach (Score:4, Insightful)
The Same way one measures other research results
SBIR/SBTT (Score:3, Informative)
Since you're doing medical research, the National Institute of Health's SBIR program [nih.gov] seems most relevant. You can also find the application forms and guidelines [nih.gov] if you look around.
Re:SBIR/SBTT (Score:1)
Why open source? (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunetly despite of what Eric writes in "The Cathedral and the Baazar" Free Software developers are still most likely to recieve their reward in fame not $$. It may feel good but the Free Software community has so far failed to work out a way to consistently financially reward the actual developers (not hardware compnaies who bundle Linux with their servers!). Even if your project become popular all you'll get from users is bitching and moaning not meaningful bug reports. Just watch the burnout suffered by Fink, MPlayer and Router floppy authors.
Focus (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can get grant money based on the finished product then open source is a good idea, but if you need to provide a product that will be sold, i think companies will be a little more frugal handing you money to create something open.
Share your thought w/ these guys (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Share your thought w/ these guys (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.linuxmednews.com/ [linuxmednews.com]
Sure you will find good info and maybe a few developers.
Peace.
Human side of things (Score:4, Insightful)
Then, talk about the benefits of an open source application, and talk about it's longevity and low cost of future manipulation. But only briefly, don't get too technical on them. Instead, attack the human aspect. Do some research and find out what the doctors and medical staffers themselves really hate, not their bosses/directors.
Not sure I understand the question (Score:4, Interesting)
You haven't been in academia long -- the answer is you make up the results like everyone else!
But seriously, I'm not sure what is unusual about this situation. You apply for the grant, saying you want to research and develop XYZ system. At the end of the time period for the grant, you'll have to show that something happened, whether it is getting 1,000 developers working on it (this is good because you can clam the investment was matched 1,000 times in donations!) or having 12 private clinics and 2 hospital systems evaluating it and participating in system testing.
Whatever, you make up everything you can think of to measure (lines of code, contributors, patients tracked, data points, countries involved, languages ported to, web site hits, days of uptime, number of compatible legacy systems), keep track of it all, and at the end of the grant you write a paper saying how fantastic all the good stuff was, or why the whole thing failed and should never be attempted again.
If you really look into currently published stuff, you'll see that 98% of it is just proving and restating the obvious in a way that people can reference for future publications, so that they don't have to waste time on the obvious when the 2% of real research takes place.
I do applaud you and encourage you (and anyone else with the stomach for grant-writing) to pursue it, you'd be surprised how easy money is to get for useful projects if you can just keep up on the paperwork and wait months and months for every step to happen.
Get a half-dozen ongoing grants and you can basically have a small company that does pure non-profit open-source development year-round (and one full-time MBA to manage the grants!).
Open Source for Medical systems and the rationale (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason for using open source software is that it is indeed a collaborative effort. For those of you that think that this is one setup shopping, its time to look at the serious projects that have made some inroads and continue to develop.
The business model for open source, indeed for those of us who remember a time before the internet (yes there WAS that time), when software started to be packaged with machines. Why, one might ask should one pay for software when it comes for free? Today $450 but tomrrow it's packaged. For those of us who watched carefully we knew that the real money to be made in the world of software would be in support and support applications. To a certain extent those who continue with proprietary and exculsionary sorts of software may well find themselves moved over because of freely available and very robust software.
The advance of linux and linux clones is such an example of the incursion of open source software. Free? Hardly. Freely available? Always.
From a standpoint of software design and development, the open source model gives those of us who wish not to be constantly hit up for nickles and dimes
So, those of you who have regarded the only path to enlightenment that of the Gates family or Big Blue, look again at some of the companies doing open source development.
As for the question about grant seeking; The FreeMED Software Foundation is seeking grants to employ coders and others to better the software. Since the Foundation is a non profit, seeking the development, promulgation and distribution of opensource software, people who are motivated to see better software development can contribute to the making of better software. In a way, donated dollars dictate direction.
There is much more about the open source movement and the intellectual freedoms that such development permits. Check them out. Check out the FreeMED Software Foundation (www.freemedsoftware.com) or the open source news list at LinuxMedNews (www.linnuxmednews.org).
Freely Submitted:
Irving J. Buchbinder aka DrGnu
FreeMED Software Foundation
Re:Open Source for Medical systems and the rationa (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Open Source for Medical systems and the rationa (Score:1)
For those of us who watched carefully we knew that the real money to be made in the world of software would be in support and support applications.
Sure (Score:2, Interesting)
Now we have some fu
In academia, it's all open source (Score:2)
What you are proposing should work, but it all depends on the source of the funding. Would they be happy with an open source solution, do they even know what open source is? You need to discuss and evaluate this with them, but in theory it should work.
Open Source or Money (Score:2)
If your project is open source then I assume you intend that other people will work on it for you. In which case, how do you intend to divide up the money?
Are you intending to take a chunk as salary? How large of a base team do you have? How much do you intend to give them?
Basically, where is all the money going and how does "Open Source" fit into it?
Ben
Linux International (Score:2, Informative)
I believe he has been involved with Open Source Development grants and LI might even have such a program.
Bill
bleck (Score:3, Interesting)
I do HIPAA audits, and I couldn't give them a a good rating on the risk analysis if they used it, because of that. No support==non-compliant. I could suggest they buy it from your company if your selling it, I don't see it being used by an IT staff somewhere without a vendor.
Re:bleck (Score:1, Informative)
support contracts if they need them. In fact,
they can get them from *anyone* competent enough.
Local shops, big contract shops, anyone - users
are not tied to the vendor.
HIPAA (Score:1)
My guess, however, whoever is funding it will probably try to make some money off of it --> installing and servicing systems (hardware/software), that means they are a vendor, and can come under the Business Associate Agreements.
I would see problems if the IT staff of the hospital tried to make their owns changes to the source code without consulting the vendor.
Re:HIPAA (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the same about the funding. I really was commenting on the whole "open source" of it.
It won't have the "rouge install" factor behind it, because it can'
HIPAA (Score:2)
I don't know if anyone could even use it. Under HIPAA law you have to have a business associate's agreement with all vendors, and ALL vendors must supply support for the products or they aren't compliant. That's not even about the actual security or code flow of the program, but the whole project itself. I do HIPAA audits, and I couldn't give them a a good rating on the risk analysis if they used it, because of that. No support==non-compliant. I could suggest they buy it from your company if your selling
Re:HIPAA (Score:2)
Re:HIPAA (Score:3, Informative)
No need to get angry. Read what you wrote:
don't know if anyone could even use it. Under HIPAA law you have to have a business associate's agreement with all vendors, and ALL vendors must supply support for the products or they aren't compliant. That's not even about the actual security or code flow of the program, but the whole project itself. I do HIPAA audits, and I couldn't give them a a good rating on the risk analysis if they used it, because of that. No support==non-compliant. I could suggest
Re:bleck (Score:1)
Re:bleck (Score:2)
Therefor, I don't think you could just download it and use it without vendor support and it stay compliant. You would have to get support from someone who could sign a BAA, which probably shouldn't be an employee. Or, your IT staff might be able to become the "support", depending on the
HIPPA expert opinion? (Score:2)
Re:HIPPA expert opinion? (Score:2)
The basic idea is to keep personal health information private. If you can see other people's charts, then that's not being private, and they are in violation. Someone could report them, and there would be an investigation. It's as simple as going to a we
Re:bleck (Score:2)
3.4.3 Vendor-supplied system software is supported by the vendor.
Page 28, HCFA Core Set of Security Requirements Audit Protocols.
Interview system software personnel concerning a selection of system software and determine the extent to which the operating version of the system software is currently supported by the vendor.
That was the original standard set out in 2000.
And it doesn't just involve the transmission of data. It also has to provide for it's integrity. Go read the Final S
Re:bleck (Score:2)
We now have a much 'looser' standard. The originals where protocals, this is just a standard. Nothing e
Re:bleck (Score:2)
Of couse someone could pick it up in a distro and decide to support it. The smart move would be for a hospital with an IT staff to pick it up, start helping with it, then outsource the program (with support) to their local clinics. I know that's what I'll be doing with it if it goes anywhere.
Check out nosi.net (Score:1, Informative)
Not sure if the directly answer your question, but: "The Nonprofit Open Source Initiative (NOSI) was begun in June 2001 to bridge this gap between the nonprofit and open source communities."
Seems like a good place to start, or at least to be in contact people who might be able to point you in the right direction.
Are you at a university? (Score:1, Interesting)
Most US (& Canadian) universities make a pile of money by charging "overhead" on grants. This is supposed to cover the costs of physical plant, the library usage related to research, etc. etc.
There is no relation between the costs of overhead and the value of the services pro
LinuxFund (Score:4, Informative)
Ask People Who've Done Similar Projects (Score:3, Informative)
I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to get NIH funding and/or grants from other sources to build a low-cost or freeware EMR system with a well-written proposal and a knowledgeable Principle Investigator directing the project (you probably need someone with a PhD in Medical Informatics or an M.D./D.O. to be your PI). If you don't have a qualified PI to head the project yet, find one. You don't want to be perceived as a novice. The people you contact will likely be far more helpful the more you sound like you know what you're doing.
Grant Writing (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Grant Writing (Score:3, Informative)
Most grants have to include an objective as well as a summary of how the objective can be verified and progress measured. I would figure for a software project grant you would either work out a concrete specification of data and structure (such as a standardized system to base future developments and cross-platform data compatibility guidelines) or base system with a realitically obtainable (and usable) featureset.
Recruit A Specialist (Score:2)
Good luck. This is a field that desperately needs Free Software.
Who is the Donor? (Score:4, Insightful)
The more you know who the donor is, the better your proposal will sound to them.
Why are there so many posts advocating... (Score:1, Interesting)
A non-free program is a predatory social system that keeps people in a state of domination and division, and uses the spoils to dominate more. It may seem like a profitable option to become one of the emperor's lieutenants, but ultimately the ethical thing to do is to resist the system and put an end to it.
The last thing we need is to have a predatory social system injected into our medical profession
At the risk of being redundant... (Score:2)
But hey, the mewling was featureful.
Why don't you just SELL it ffs (Score:1)
Re:Why don't you just SELL it ffs (Score:2)
Your Boss represents the problems with public perception of the internet in general [RIAA, MPAA, KAZZA, etc]. Nobody wants to RESPECT other's rights in business. After all, there's no need to hide what he's doing, a
Job (Score:1)
Other Medical Sources to Ask (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.hardhats.org/
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med/his
directory.google.com/Top/Computers
AMA Grants (Score:1)
The AMA awards grants for all kinds of things -- sometimes even worthwhile things -- sometimes even productive things!
Surely the prospect of funding a productive piece of medical software would be in their best interests!
A word of advice: make sure it's DOS so it will work on most doctors' computers.
Plenty of examples (Score:3, Informative)
If you want another great example, contact the IT group at the University of Delaware. They developed (under a grant and collaboration with a few other schools) uPortal. This is an open source portal system which is packaged and serviced by several different vendors (RedHat style) like SCT and Campus Pipeline. Since the development they have found they get a better response from other granting organizations as well as vendors (like Blackboard and WebCT to develop modules for it). So not only do you get the immediate benefit of money to assist in the development (to pay salaries, buy computers, buy software, etc.) but you get many continuing benefits from it as well.
Veterans Administration (Score:1, Informative)
one example at the NIH (Score:4, Interesting)
This is just one example, I'm sure there are many others even just at the NIH (incl. at the new NIBIB).
Open Currency (Score:1)
Try for SBIR funding (Score:2)
1. Form a small business
2. Write Phase I proposal
3. Receive Phase I award
4. Write Phase II proposal
5. Recieve Phase II award
6. $$$
Check out the NIH SBIR [nih.gov] page. You might be interested in the "Clinical Technology Applications" topic for the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR).
Re: (Score:1)
Open Mash + NSF (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not exactly sure what you're asking when you talk about measuring the results of an open source project for publication. But any proposal would have to talk about why the project you are proposing has value in
Hmm, my e-mail is backwards! (Score:1)
Be sure to Google (Score:1)
it's all about... (Score:2)
don't worry about the open source thing, publishing under an open source license is very compatible with the spirit of doing science. after all, your peers should be able to use the outcome of your research, and follow up on it, right?
but: who will own the copyright to the software? this is the only thing you need to figure out. all the research i do belongs to my employer (university), which becomes especially important when i would like to make money with it. check wh
There is Freemed (Score:1, Interesting)
open source (Score:2, Interesting)
ITK itk.org (Score:2, Informative)
Incidental (Score:2)
If you look at most open source software, its development was not the prime objective of the research project.
Rather, the objective is to do something new, interesting and different from what has been done before.
Your proposal should combine some ingredients that would make the medical records system better in a signficant way. It doesn't have to be rocket science, but it can include some ideas that you have to make it a different project than just wrapping up a SQL engine with a GUI.
My own suggestion i
Open Source Grants? (Score:2, Insightful)
we got a grant for the reiser4 filesystem (Score:2)
You need to do a spreadsheet with a budget, but list only the Principal Investigator by name, that way if someone quits, everything is still fine. List people by job name not real name.
Accounting requires someone capable of real math or experienced, preferably both, because you need to calculate indirect costs and read about what is unbillable, etc. Take the accounting very seriously, any carelessness or worse will get you into real trouble (including lega
zherlock. (Score:2, Informative)
We're actually funded by 'norsk forskningsrad' (norwegian councel of science), and we're situated at my uni. If you're going to take money, there are a couple of questions you're going to have to ask yourself:
1. What does the grant-giver want in return? While some grants are nearly no-strings attached, in the end there's strings on everything; and no exceptions made..
2. How much more time will you spend
Tux Paint (Score:2)
But, I suppose that's mainly because I'm lacking a full-time job. (Stupid Worldcom)
Citations are everything (Score:2)
First off, decide what you want to do. Then, find copies of every research paper you can find that is related. When you write your proposal, follow the standard format for an academic paper or proposal. This involves showing how your work relates to the work done by these other people.
Re:Yes (Score:1)
Open source can be profitable (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:grants (Score:1)