The University Hospital of the German city of Freiburg is using open source software for its ‘Cruciate Ligament Rupture Study’, aiming to involve users of smartphones and tablet PCs to share data that will help to improve treatments. The main application is built using ResearchKit, a toolbox for developing medical research software applications.
ResearchKit was made available as open source by Apple in March this year, and is published under a BSD-type software licence.
The application, titled ‘Back on Track: Kreuzbandriss-Studie’ (Cruciate Ligament Rupture Study), is the first application built outside of the USA that uses ResearchKit. “Apple also told us that it is the second project worldwide”, says Martin Zens, a medical doctor and software developer working for the University of Freiburg. He is developing the application together with Design-IT, a software development firm based in Frankfurt.
The software is at the moment only available for users of smartphones and tablet devices running of Apple’s proprietary iOS operating system. “You might say that limiting ResearchKit to a single platform limits the software”, agrees Zens. On the other hand, he says, for the first time a major software firm is offering possibilities for major medical studies, allowing users of its mobile devices to participate. “Considering the company’s market share for smartphones and tablets, and adding to that what has been possible on a local level with medical studies so far, this is already a tremendous breakthrough, from a researchers’ perspective” Zens says. “Still, we are looking forward to roll-out our app on other mobile devices.”
Apple announced that the software development kit will be adapted for other mobile computing platforms, says Zens, and the University Hospital will make version’s of its application available for other mobile devices. The developer does not yet know if these other versions will require to rewrite the code.
Licence and community
The Freiburg University Hospital software developer explains that all data collected with the Kreuzbandriss-Studie-app is stored on servers that are independent from the proprietary vendor. “The data is stored on servers managed by the University, based on the LAMP software bundle, a well-known combination of open source components for running web applications.
ResearchKit’s open source licence was important for the project team, says Zens. “Absolutely. The code is well-documented and we hope a growing community will make it easier for medical researchers to conduct such studies.”
“Such projects will help improve treatment of patients” adds Prof. Dr. Philipp Niemeyer, an orthopedic surgeon at the hospital, who came up with the idea for the app.
Multilingual
The source code for ‘Back on Track: Kreuzbandriss-Studie’ is not publicly available - yet, says Zens. “We are in early stages of development. However, we are planning on contributing to the project especially the language files and some of the functions that have been developed.”
The app is available in German. Versions in other languages are to follow soon.
More information:
Press announcement from the Universitätsklinikum Freiburg (in German)
Presentation of the cruciate ligaments rupture app
ResearchKit.org