Open source software for developing world hospitals
Sorry another story about my journey with my son while he battled cancer.<p>Closed Proprietary image formats and systems HURTS patients. We used the local hospital for Chemo and everything else at the Children's Hospital 1.5 hours away for his legs and lungs. I would always have to wait 20-30 minutes to get a DVD of the studies (PET, CT Scan or MRI even ultrasound, but those are worthless) and then bring them to the doctor.  The doctor would be forced to use whatever the portable image viewing program that came on the DVD and then they had to be sent to the IT Department to be imported into their system.<p>We would be there to remove some horrible tumor but before half his surgeries (I can't count how many surgeries he had) we would have to go in the day before (3 hour round trip) to get the expensive scan done again. One time I had a scan at 11 PM - Midnight and then drive home around 2 AM and be back at the hospital at 7 AM check in for a 10 hour surgery. ALL BECAUSE THE FORMATS ARE CLOSED and SYSTEMS could not connect so that my son's records were all the same every where. I carried 20 DVDs with me all the time just in case.<p>In case you are wondering my son unfortunately passed away after almost 5 years of fighting. If you are ever interested in giving to a cancer society please consider stbaldricks.org. Most charities give 0% or 2% to pediatric research and that is why we went over 20 years without a new chemo for children till last year, which St Baldrick's funded the research for this amazing new drug to fight a different type of cancer my son did not have.