Penguins with Stethoscopes: Free and Open Source Software for Healthcare Education

Inocencio Maramba, M.D. and Eric Pareja
Medical Informatics Unit, College of Medicine and Information Management Services, University of the Philippines Manila

ABSTRACT:

In the past few years, free and open source operating systems and applications have evolved from being the plaything of computer gurus to a force to reckon with on the mainstream software market. Even in the medical journals, open source software has been suggested as a possible solution to the spiraling costs of healthcare computing (Carnall, BMJ 2000; 321:976). In this paper, we describe our experience for nearly a decade with using free and open source software in a large healthcare education institution, the University of the Philippines Manila. It began with setting up a Local Area Network in one of units of the UP Manila health sciences centre, the College of Public Health in 1994. The aim was to provide electronic mail, access to the world wide web, and file server services to the various departments. To meet budgetary requirements, a free operating system, GNU Linux, was chosen as the network operating system. Linux was then chosen as the operating system to run the servers for the UP Manila Campus Wide Area Network. One of the strengths of the system was its ability to server a heterogeneous network of workstations, consisting of an assortment of Intel PCs and Apple Macintoshes. In another unit of the UP Manila Health Sciences Centre, the College of Medicine, GNU Linux was used as the development platform for several clinical and healthcare education applications, as well as providing email, web access, and web site services. These applications included Coolteam, a Collaborative Online Teaching and Mentoring program; and I-doc2, Interactive Document Creation. These were provided through the use of other free and open source software, such as the Apache Web Server, PHP Scripting language, MySQL database, Perl, IMP, PHP-Nuke and other free and open source software packages. The impact of the installed server base was enormous, with the UP Manila WAN growing from 20+ workstations to over 300+ workstations in just a 4 years. As UP Manila looks to the future, it is widely acknowledged that Free and Open Source Software will play a vital role in maintaining its premiere status as a Healthcare Education Provider.

Session will demonstrate the usability and cost-benefit to educators of using free and open source software. Also, the process of learning how to install, implement, and maintain open source development projects is good training in the core concepts of healthcare educational computing. Any healthcare education institution seeking to implement web based computer based training systems in a cost-effective manner will learn from these experiences.

Inocencio C. Maramba MD
Claycroft Halll 3 Flat 19 Room 6
University of Warwick
Coventry, West Midlands
CV4 7AL
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 24 7657 2572 ext 30333
Email: i.c.maramba@warwick.ac.uk
Website: http://www.upcm.net:8000/~idcm/

CO-AUTHORS:

Eric Pareja
Herman Tolentino M.D.
Alex Yu M.D.
Information Management Systems UP Manila
Medical Informatics Unit UP College of Medicine
Medical Informatics Unit UP College of Medicine
Email: xenos@gra.ph
hermant@i-manila.com.ph
alexyu@cm.upm.edu.ph
Website: http://gra.ph/~xenos/
http://www.upcm.net/