[FOSS_health] Re: [openhealth] Open Sourcing of Proteus Tools

[Molly Cheah]

Here's the abstract of a paper presented at OSHCA2007 in May in KL.

Legal issues impacting the use of open source software in health care


by GK Ganesan


Software relating to healthcare: an introduction to some legal issues

This paper examines legal issues relating to the use of open source 
software in

healthcare, and in particular, discusses questions of law that fall 
within the purview

of the law of contract, and the law of tort.

Software is ubiquitous in the modern word. Nothing is ever done without 
it, and it

would appear, nothing is ever going to be done without it . Yet, as the 
historian

Edward Gibbon said it, it is easier to deplore the state of than to 
describe the

condition of software users.

The sort of software that is used in the medical field has wide scope, 
both of form,

function and range: for instance there are software that deal with mere 
recordkeeping

of patient data and billing procedures. Then there are those that cater for

the electronic monitoring of emergency procedure, or drug dispensation 
in a ‘live’

situation; and finally there are software systems that seem to play a 
major role in

clinical decision making processes. We are here concerned with the latter as

opposed to the former.

Medical personnel are trained to make clinical decisions premised 
observations and

the way a patient responds to stimuli, including drugs, circumstances 
and time.

Decisions are made by observation or other diagnostic tools. What software

purport to do is to take over this human function, prone to human-error 
as it is, and

to translate it into an accurate system of information processing that 
is used to make

decisions which affect the well-being of human beings. So far, so good, 
but how far

may one take this hypothesis before it becomes unsafe to patients?

Software is crafted by programmers and system architects, and not 
doctors. Are the

software or their authors prone to error? If they are, are programmers 
liable, and if

so, in what way? What are the limitations of their liability, and how 
far or wide is the

net cast?

This paper aims to answer these questions by the application of general law.



Hemant Shah wrote:
> Proteus (http://www.proteme.org) is an approach that allows authoring
> executable clinical processes and guidelines with decision support
> integrated within them.
>
> I am on the verge of making Proteus related tools available under an open
> source license. I need the advice of this community of open source champions
> on how to go about it and the choice of open source license. I know this has
> been discussed time and again on this list but I am still unclear about
> several things. Therefore please indulge my naiveté.
>
> I think LGPL provides most of what I need however I am still not clear about
> the use of derivative products. Specific example: what is there to prevent
> me from taking a class e.g, Person of an open source project and extend it
> by a class called SpecialPerson, and instead of adding the functionality
> that logically belongs in the Person class, enhance the SpecialPerson which
> I then keep closed source? By doing this one can easily violate the spirit
> and the intent of the license.
>
> My employer, Henry Ford Health System (HFHS) is supporting me in getting the
> Proteus tools open sourced. We have plans to use the open source version for
> research and to assist clinicians in patient care. Therefore significant
> development will take place after it has been open sourced. I have access to
> the HFHS legal department if needed. However, I need to know what help
> should I seek from them. Does it make sense to craft your own open source
> license instead of utilizing one of the standard ones?
>
> Any advice will be appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> Hemant
>
>