I thought that Christopher Snider’s presentation on Tidepool was extremely interesting. I think that Tidepool as a company, particularly the upcoming Tidepool Loop app, is extremely compelling, and has the potential to revolutionize lifestyles of diabetics. I believe that patients should be able to see and monitor their medical info much more openly and easily. Tidepool Loop is a step in the right direction, allowing diabetic patients to monitor their insulin levels as well as administer insulin automatically. Furthermore, users have complete access to view all of the source code of the app, so there is full transparency as to how the underlying code works. Many existing methods for insulin dosing are closed source, so users are kept in the dark about how the device they are using is operating. I think that Tidepool Loop becoming popular will pave the way for future open-source medical apps.

Tidepool, as an open-source project, behaves slightly differently from other open-source projects we know. While all of the code is accessible and viewable by the user, users that are not part of the core contributor team are unable to make code contributions. Thus, unlike other open source projects, not everyone is able to make a contribution. While some may see this as a detriment, I think that this is probably necessary due to the rigorous testing and domain-specific knowledge that is required to write code that is responsible for people’s lives. NASA also operates under a similar philosophy, where all code is free and open source, but only people within the organization can contribute.