Re: [Gnumed-devel] Willing to contribute - where should I start?

[Sebastian Hilbert]

Am Donnerstag 29 Juli 2010, 23:14:50 schrieb Misha Koshelev:
> Dear All:
> 

Hi Misha,

Welcome to the GNUmed project.

> I am a medical student in the US and am quite interested in third world
> medicine.
> 
GNUmed is not specifically targeted at the third world but it can serve as a 
base to enhance it with features needed in the third world.

> I am also a big fan of open source and, although do not have Python
> programming background, have been programming in C, Pascal, x86
> Assembly, Java, MATLAB, Groovy, etc. etc. since age nine.
> 
> In any case, I am in the lucky position that I have a fair bit of free
> time to devote right now, and doing some Google searches for "open
> source medicine" I ran into your product.
> 
Nice to hear.

> It seems really neat - although I have the impression from the
> testimonials that, although perhaps widely in use in Europe, it has not
> yet found major adopters in the US.
> 
Let me provide a bit of history. GNUmed focuses on the medical record part. It 
tries to help the doctor whereever it can. It tries to support the continous 
documentation of a patient's health and illnesses.

It does not concern itself with the billing part yet. Many physicians say they 
are looking for and EMR when they are actually looking for a billing software.

Billing in the US and even across Europe is not a uniform task so a lot of 
different billing solutions exist.

> In any case, I am:
> a) willing to learn Python
> and
> b) willing to contribute to your project, esp if you think there is
> interest wrt global medicine in your project
> 
GNUmed has been designed to be as agnostic to healthcare settings as possible. 
That means it tries not to be US centric or targeted at any other healthcare 
setting but while it "supports" many healthcare systems that way none have 
been implemented.

One task could be to look into integrating FreeB with GNUmed to provide 
billing to US doctors.

> but I ask
> c) some initial help/investment
> d) pointers as to where to help out
> 

You might have seen the WIKI at http://wiki.gnumed.de
We try our best to document everything from code and database to concepts such 
as health issues , episodes and SOAP input.

> I am willing to devote quite a bit of time to this, so if you believe
> this project cannot quite handle a new developer with a lot of time to
> contribute, I would appreciate your honest response as well.
> 

Do you have any feature in mind you would like to see implemented in any given 
software? Do you have an itch to scratch or a use case ? If not we can help 
you with pointers. I alway find it the best way to start if you have an idea 
on what you would like to work on.

We would like you to voice any questions you have. There is no hierachy or 
anything. If you have questions or ideas let us know.

Sebastian