Open Source in Medicine

This week we’ve watched videos on how technology, and open source software in particular can solve some of the problems we face. I’ve watched the videos related to healthcare. One was about devices that could measure insulin levels and give access to the data, and the other was about patients having access to the notes doctors take about them. In both cases, having access to one’s own health data is critical.

Firstly, it makes the data more accurate. If there’s an inaccuracy in the doctor’s notes, the patient can correct it. Secondly, I believe people should have the right to seek alternative treatments if they see fit, and having access to their data would empower them to do so.

While I believe on trusting the experts when it comes to medicine, there are a lot of topics even the experts can’t agree on. If an individual wishes to consult multiple different doctors, or anybody else that they want, they should be able to take their health data with them and do their consultations. It should be up to the individual to do whatever they want with their data.

Contributions

This week I haven’t been able to make a lot of contributions. I made a small contribution to one of my classmates’ firefox extension. The extension motivates you by displaying insults everytime you snooze the timer alarm. However, they used to have one big const variable to store all the insults, I moved the insults to a JSON file and have the script fetch it from there. This way it’s way easier to add/remove insults and even who doesn’t know how to code can hop into the json file and figure out how to add insults.