Monthly Archives: June 2000

German Start-up to Develop Medical Image Processing Software

DigitalMedics is a german start-up company that
aims to develop medical image processing software
that exclusively runs under the Linux operating
system. The first product called REALTIQ which stands for “Re-aligning Tissue Quantification” is scheduled to be
released in September 2000, more information
at the companies website. The software is currently in the alpha-stage.

“The user can specify,
intuitively by using the mouse, an axis through this data, as well as a bounding-box around that axis.”

Further, the company has a nice little ditty on why Linux? as opposed to a well-known other operating system.

According to the company their REALTIQ Software Features:

  1. Re-align any patient-scan to new arbitrary axes by tri-linear interpolation
  2. Segmentation of long-bone tissue
  3. Quantification of long-bone tissue
  4. DICOM compatible

Requirements:

  1. Linux operating system
  2. 64MB RAM or more
  3. About 4MB of disk-space

Escaping the Clinic: Providers as Developers of Medical Software Applications

Many health care providers, seeking to escape the long hours, diminishing pay and endless paperwork associated with managed care, are continuing to leave clinical practice for careers as medical informatics developers. Linux represents a terrific opportunity, as what is presently available software application-wise for the medical field is sparse, as compared to the catalog for the M$ Windows platform.

One of the best examples of health care providers that successfully developed software applications to meet market demand are the folks at Mad Scientist Software. Mad Scientist provides educational software for emergency medicine practitioners. The software proved to be very popular with fellow EMT’s, when I introduced the company’s software applications as part of a continuing education program. It’s a pretty safe bet that there is presently a demand for Linux-based EMS software. Emergency medicine practitioners with an interest in software development should take note of this opportunity.

Free Software Runs LinuxMedNews-Announce List

In a constant effort to keep you informed of breaking news on the site that is ‘Revolutionizing Medical Education and Practice’. LinuxMedNews laboratories brings you the LinuxMedNews-Announce list. This is an announcement service which will send you an e-mail when a critical mass of new items appears on LinuxMedNews as determined by our highly sophisticated artificial intelligence engine (me). You can subscribe through our web interface located here. This list will not be sold to third parties, and announcements can only be posted by LinuxMedNews. In case you were wondering, Mailman the software running the list is 100% free and open source.

Discussion: Is Linux Penetrating the Healthcare Environment?

Open source advocate and British Medical journalist Douglas Carnall is developing three articles for publication in the dead tree world. He’s looking for specific projects in health care settings that have used open source software as part of the solution. This could be anything from a professional systems administrator implementing a Linux/Apache webserver for a large commercial HMO, or a lone generalist devising his own unique electronic medical record. Is Linux penetrating the healthcare environment? What are the examples out there?

But What About Speech Recognition?

An informal poll of practitioners is likely to reveal a ‘pre-acceptance’ of voice recognition technology in medicine. Doesn’t the open source model fail in such a prorietary area with high lucrative potential? How does open source do on this important technology? Very well, thank you. Carnegie Mellon’s voice-recognition Sphinx project is open source. The currently available Sphinx2 is described as a ‘…candidate for handheld, portable, and embedded devices, and telephone and desktop
systems that require short response times.’ Sphinx3 which should be available ‘in 2000’ is described as a ‘…slower, yet more accurate recognizer used, for example, for broadcast news transcription…

Putting It All Together

Www.JimIntriglia.com Refers to an example of making disparate clinical computing software work over a web browser in Using the Web to extend patient
care. Intriglia writes:

[This article] explores how CareGroup, a
network of hospitals in the Boston
area, developed a web-based
system to enable providers to access clinical
records any of the six area CareGroup hospital
databases. The challenge faced by developers was
to enable data access via a common web browser
to clinical information stored on dissimilar and
proprietary clinical information systems. A
Java/XML based system solution, developed by
the MIT W3 EMRS project group, was the key to
the infrastructure problem that CareGroup
developers faced. The University of Michigan
maintains a CareWeb demo where you can learn
more about the CareWeb architecture and
capabilities.

Wearable PC’s in Your Future?

This article on eWeek examines the latest developments in wearable computers and discusses a pioneer in the field Steve Mann’s computer:

‘Mann’s computer incorporates…”eye-tapping” which is laser-based technology that…allows the eye to function simultaneously as if it were a display and a camera.’

Mann is quoted as saying that Windows is not the operating system for a wearable computer. That his wearable computer is based on GNU Linux. This should separate the true geek practitioner from the posers. My lab coat already holds about 4 meg of data: Palmpilot, Sanford and Pharmacopeia. Think about a 20 gigabyte lab coat.