Welcome to LinuxMedNews
 up a level
 post article
 search
 admin
 Contact
 main


  Economist: An open-source shot in the arm?
Bioinformatics Posted by Ignacio Valdes, MD, MS on Sunday June 13, 2004 @ 08:56 PM
from the Bioinformatics dept.
No less a publication than The Economist has this to say about Open Source: 'Can goodwill, aggregated over the internet, produce good medicine?...Pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to develop treatments for diseases that particularly afflict the poor, for example, since the people who need such treatments most may not be able to afford them. It is in this environment that a number of medical biologists, lawyers, entrepreneurs and health-care activists have sought improvements. They have suggested borrowing the “open-source” approach that has proven so successful in another area of technology, namely software development. This is a decentralised form of production in which the underlying programming instructions, or “source code”, for a given piece of software are made freely available. Anyone can look at it, modify it, or improve it, provided they agree to share their modifications under the same terms. Volunteers collaborating in this way over the internet have produced some impressive software: the best-known example is the Linux operating system. So why not apply the open-source model to drug development too?... Thanks to Jaap Suermondt for this link. Digg this article



<  |  >

 

  Related Links
  • Articles on Bioinformatics
  • Also by Ignacio Valdes, MD, MS
  • Contact author
  • The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them.
    ( Reply )

    Re: Economist: An open-source shot in the arm?
    by AnonyMouse on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @ 09:58 PM
    "[The first big question is] whether open-source methods can genuinely foster innovation. In software, all that has been developed [by Open Source developers] are functional equivalents of proprietary software—operating systems, databases, and so on—that are sometimes slightly better and sometimes glaringly worse than their proprietary counterparts."

    It's Nice to know that the Economist is doing their Research.

    [ Reply to this ]
    • Re: Economist: An open-source shot in the arm?
      by Ignacio Valdes, MD, MS on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @ 10:40 PM
      I would say that your second sentence about Open Source developers producing only functional equivalents of proprietary software is grossly in error. Much of what has become proprietary software came from software developed in a Free/Open Source way. Certainly most of the Internet/Web has never been proprietary. Many believe that large parts of Windows are taken in whole or in part from FreeBSD. -- IV
      [ Reply to this ]
    Re: Economist: An open-source shot in the arm?
    by Mark Dalton, OD on Monday June 28, 2004 @ 07:40 AM
    This is already done in some degree through the collaboration with public and private universities using our tax dollars from the NIH. Basic research drives new end user medical discoveries. Besides drug companies will not give up patents=dollars.
    [ Reply to this ]
    The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them.
    ( Reply )


     
    Google
     
    www.linuxmednews.com Web
    Advertisement: CCHIT certified EMR and Medical Practice Management Software from Medical Software Associates makes patient management easy. Free practice management and medical billing software demo available.
    All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective companies. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest ©2000-2006 Ignacio Valdes, MD, MS.