Advice for an Open Source Development Grant?

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?

Is your goal ge get the job done, or to open source your code, or to get money? Imho they are very different goals.

Re:what's the goal?

Is your goal ge get the job done, or to open source your code, or to get money? Imho they are very different goals.

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?

Imho they are very different goals.

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

Why should this be any different?

Refer to other medical research proposals. I'm assuming that you're not trying to get this grant on the sole basis of this being open source, right? The open v/s closed source nature of your project should be pretty irrelevant to your research proposal.

A good idea

for someone with the time to do so, would be to make a portal with as much info on this subject, and links to sites that may be able to help you get started / funded for such a project. I'm sure the OSS community would appreciate a site with such information. Just a thought...

Open Source Medical Software

Have you checked around Source Forge for similar projects?
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

Nobody uses Electronic Medical Records

There already is an open-source EMR (gnumed.org), but no doctors are using them, because the switchover is just too hard. My dad's a doctor, and he was promiced a free EMR, just pay for the hardware. In fact, it was the FIRST EMR ever made, but he would have to hire extra people to load the rooms of files he had into the computer. It was just too hard.

Like writing any grant I would bet.

My guess would be that writing this grant would be like writing any other grant. The idea is to propose an idea, outline your thesis (in this case, why you are making a case for this software and why open source), talk about the background of this project, why it is important what the implications are if this were to succeed and how you plan on going about completing this project. Outline the costs and give a timeline, clearly state your goals and wrap it up.

Re:Like writing any grant I would bet.

I should also have stated that I believe there is a significant need for medical records management software in the open source community and if you were to perform a little market research on medical records software, you would find the field is a mess of competing programs and standards, and you would not believe how much money is made by businesses that have half assed solutions to the problem. The cost to individual medical practices and hospitals is considerable and many companies do not have any real clue of how to properly implement this code. Things are complicated by numerous proprietary databases and lots of new HIPAA legislation that makes interconnectivity a real nightmare.

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.

I don't know if you count this as a grant but...

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

You did what a lot of Linux developers fail to do: start a business around services that people really need, and just so happen to use Linux to get it done. In the end, the clients won't really care what is under the hood as long as it works.

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.

Open Source Reseach

>How could one measure the results of open source >development for publication?"

The Same way one measures other research results .. Your reseach being opensource has no impact either positive or negative on the reviewers mind. Keep in mind the goals and make sure the job is well done .. Just because it is open source does not mean the results can be mediocre .. some of the best reseach is open source.

SBIR/SBTT

The government has a fair number of programs that are intended to fund small companies transferring research into products. In particular are the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. While, these particular ones require PhDs or Professors (respectively) to head the projects, you could look at their applications to get an idea of what you ought to put in your proposal.

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.

Why open source?

May I ask you why you decided to open source it?
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

If you want to make an open sourced system just for the sake of it being open then you're going to have a hard time. I firmly believe that some things should be open sourced, but it's not always prudent to do so. Every situation is different and open source isn't always the answer. Companies need to make money, even the open source friendly companies release software closed source.

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

They're [pennfirm.com] in the open source medical software biz as well.

Re:Share your thought w/ these guys

You also want to announce your project here:

http://www.linuxmednews.com/ [linuxmednews.com]

Sure you will find good info and maybe a few developers.

Peace.

Human side of things

Make comparisons between what current medical software offers, and what yours can/will. Identify weak points in the current software, or user annoyances (even little things, like the printer that the software company decideds to use as their "solution", but drives the users mad), and promise that these annoynaces and weaknesses will not be present in yours.

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

How could one measure the results of open source development for publication?

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

Why use open source as a medical record system? Why use the open source model? As one of the replying pundits put it "move out of mom's house and get a real job".

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 ... actually the SCO model for those of you who remember SCO in its heyday before barritry became popular ... a place to find some security. More important is that from a physician standpoint what could be better than CQI, continuous quality improvement. The open source channel makes that not only possible, but nearly mandatory.

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

bleck

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 it, I don't see it being used by an IT staff somewhere without a vendor.

LinuxFund

LinuxFund.org has been kind enough to supply two of my projects (GNUpdate [gnupdate.org] and Gaim for Qtopia [sourceforge.net]) with funding and hardware. It may not directly relate to your question, since it sounds like you already have someone that may be giving you the money, but you can look at their policies and requirements, and request more information.

Ask People Who've Done Similar Projects

I'd suggest you try contacting people at eFilm Medical [efilm.ca]. They developed PACS workstation software that, if I recall correctly, was funded by the Canadian government. You could also try contacting Bob Cox [nih.gov], who built a software package called AFNI for analysis of neurofunctional MRI data (an NIH funded project).

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

My advice to you (I have received several grants and fellowships) is to really be tight on the proposal. If the grant application asks you to write it in blood, write it in blood. I have also been on committees that review grant proposals. We would kick proposals, unread, for not having the correct format on the TITLE PAGE! When I complained that this was a minor thing, the committee chair looked over her glasses and said, "If it isn't perfect, then it doesn't deserve our consideration or our money." Be tight. That is my advice.

Who is the Donor?

Not that I want to know, but the goals and interests of the funding agency should be reflected in your proposal. For example, if the funding agency is interested in third-world health, then play up the low cost of the software for impoverished/disadvantaged clinics. If the donor is a big pharma company, then play up how they could "give this away" to potential customers or use it in clinical research. If the third party is more interested in academic research, then show how the system can support data collection, double-blind studies, etc. I'm not sure that the "open source" angle will have much traction unless you can show that the open source process multiplies the impact of the donor's money.

The more you know who the donor is, the better your proposal will sound to them.

Plenty of examples

There are many examples of this available. My group (at a medical school) has collaborated on a number of grant projects (government and private granting agencies) where money was awarded for the development of open source software. In fact, the grants we have worked on require that the software be made publicly available (although most of what we do is of little interest outside of clinical/educational medicine).

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.

one example at the NIH

One example I'm familiar with is the NIH Office on Neuroinformatics (no link provided, I don't want to Slashdot my funding agency!) supports the development of software for things like brain imaging and databasing. Their funded projects include lots of open source and GPLed projects, some directed by Slashdot readers (well, at least one). I don't know of any place where you can find successful applications, but you can at least browse some project descriptions.

This is just one example, I'm sure there are many others even just at the NIH (incl. at the new NIBIB).

Open source can be profitable

Just because it's something you enjoy doing doesn't mean it's not work. There's a famous quote by someone or another that says: "find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life". Yeah, it's corny, but true, and if working on something you believe in gives you happiness and makes money go for it. It's not like open source has no revenue, look at Red Hat etc. They're making money off of open source. A good example(And it is somewhat on topic), is Tripwire. They built it funded through whoever in Computer Security, and then one of the Grad students who worked on it started a company off of it. They offer support etc. for the product and a free version for the open source community which also helps them get it improved. I'm sure there are numerous other examples of money making open source projects, but that's all I could think of since I'm at Purdue. Here's a nice article [tripwire.com]about Tripwire just got 8.3 Million dollars of funding. So I don't know what your definition of work is, but to me it's doing a service that people will pay you for.

BTW: Communism [wikipedia.org] is where the government evenly distributes wealth, not when alot of people work together on a project. Might be helpful if you have to go through a high-school history course again ;)