In his recent presentation, Christopher Snider from Tidepool highlighted how their nonprofit is leveraging open source software to create innovative diabetes management solutions to reduce the burden of Type 1 Diabetes. Their flagship product, Tidepool Loop, is an FDA-approved app that connects insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors to provide automated insulin delivery.

What makes Tidepool Loop truly groundbreaking is that it is built entirely on open source software and standards. This open approach stands in stark contrast to the traditional model in healthcare, where proprietary systems lead to data silos and lack of interoperability. The open nature of Tidepool’s work facilitates external contributions, rigorous peer review, and trust through transparency. Clinicians, researchers, and even patients themselves can inspect the Loop codebase, suggest improvements, and be confident about its safety and efficacy. This flexibility and choice is revolutionary in an industry that has long been dominated by closed systems.

On the topic of security and privacy for sensitive health data, an understandable initial concern, Snider explained that closed, proprietary systems can merely obscure their security rather than making it more robust. With open source, any potential vulnerabilities can be uncovered and addressed by the large community inspecting the code. In fact, Tidepool even compensates individuals who discover and report legitimate security holes.

Interestingly though, while Tidepool develops Loop as open source, they actually don’t accept direct code contributions from outside their organization at this time. I believe this is due to the high level of domain knowledge and skill needed to work in this field.

Looking ahead, the open source approach pioneered by Tidepool could have profound implications across healthcare and other industries still beholden to legacy proprietary systems. By demonstrating the power of interoperability, collaboration, and transparency at scale, Tidepool is charting a new path forward – one where openness is embraced as a key driver of innovation.

Pandas Updates

Pandas updates have been relatively slower. I was facing some build issues in the development environment but I raised an issue so hopefully that’s fixed soon!