I have worked for a company to develop commercial, closed source, medical software. It was a surgical tray tracker/management software. I suggested that we invest in OSS technology to cut down on development costs, and to port the program to other platforms. Needless to say I am no longer working there.

I’ve been out of work since 2002, but I have ideas for medical programs that may be of use. I’d like to make them OSS, but I am new at this.

I am currently going back to college to earn a business degree, as the computer industry takes a nose-dive. I am doing research on OSS development and trying to find out what medical organizations need. I need to know what kind of resurces exist for OSS development in the medical area.

I am getting ready to form a company, I graduate near the end of 2005. I hope to get the company up and running by 2006.

I recently found out about this site, and it looks very interesting.

Possible software programs I might develop are:

Surgical tray tracking and management.

Nursing home patient tracking and records.

911 CAD (Computer Automated Dispatch) software and Linux drivers. Possible CAD box design at an inexpensive price to keep it affordable. Using double throw relays to control things. VOIP (Voice Over IP), and more advanced features.

I would like to turn my ideas/vision into reality. I am not sure what type of a market there is, or if any health/medical organizations are interested in open source development.

So my question is, what kind of resources are there out there for people like me trying to get into open source software development for health/medical use? Thanks.