Relevant Aspects for Sustainable Open Source Pandemic Apps and Platform Deployment With Focus on Community Building

Daniel Thole*, Till Ole Diesterhöft, Stefan Vogel, Maike Greve, Elena Bauer, Stefan Strathmann, Christian Elsner, Lutz Kolbe, Dagmar Krefting

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingArticle in proceedingsResearchpeer-review

Abstract

The global COVID-19 pandemic revealed the necessity for mobile and web-based solutions for a variety of medical processes, e.g., individual risk calculation, communication of health information and contact tracing. Many such solutions are provided in form of open source software. However, there are major obstacles to the sustainable long-term continuation of such projects. As the topic of sustainability strategies is complex, a classification would be useful to help new projects to identify relevant sustainability factors. Based on a literature review a classification for long-term success of open source software was created. This paper presents a classification focusing on five unique categories: (1) structural decision, (2) revenue generation, (3) user focus, (4) openness and (5) community building. It was developed within the NUM-COMPASS project, focusing content-wise on pandemic apps and structure-wise on open-source provision. We provide some insights into the community building dimension by discussing factors that go into building sustainable communities.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationGerman Medical Data Sciences 2021 : Digital Medicine: Recognize - Understand - Heal - Proceedings of the Joint Conference of the 66th Annual Meeting of the German Association of Medical Informatics, Biometry, and Epidemiology e.V. (gmds) and the 13th Annual Meeting of the TMF - Technology, Methods, and Infrastructure for Networked Medical Research e.V. 2021
EditorsRainer Rohrig, Tim Beissbarth, Jochem Konig, Claudia Ose, Geraldine Rauch, Ulrich Sax, Bjorn Schreiweis, Martin Sedlmayr
Number of pages8
PublisherIOS Press
Publication date21 Sept 2021
Pages186-193
ISBN (Electronic)9781643682068
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 21 Sept 2021
Externally publishedYes
Event66th Annual Conference of the German Association for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (GMDS) / 12th TMF Annual Congress
Digital medicine - recognise, understand, heal
- Virtual, Online, Germany
Duration: 26 Sept 202130 Sept 2021
Conference number: 66
https://www.egms.de/dynamic/en/meetings/gmds2021/index.htm

Conference

Conference66th Annual Conference of the German Association for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (GMDS) / 12th TMF Annual Congress
Digital medicine - recognise, understand, heal
Number66
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityVirtual, Online
Period26/09/202130/09/2021
OtherJoint Conference.
Internet address
SeriesStudies in Health Technology and Informatics
Volume283
ISSN0926-9630

Keywords

  • COVID-19
  • Open Source
  • Pandemic
  • Sustainability

Cite this