Nobody was doing pink so we settled on it ;)

I have come up with a new phrase and I am going to keep saying it and it is “The most important open source software has not yet been made.” But why is this phrase true? Simply put we have a lot of great open source software out there but the most important open source software is the one that’s not been written because of some barrier or challenge.

For every person, different software has different levels of importance right? So what is the most important unwritten open source software for me? Well it is health tech software that enables people to better understand how their health is and how their choices can impact it positively and negatively.

I was recently diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and I have from the get-go tried to use technology and software to help me manage it. From graphing my glucose levels so I know how different foods impact me to tracking medication and other important metrics. But one thing stuck out when I was looking at available tools is that there are not many open source health tech applications and tools available and those that did exist were inferior to the proprietary ones.

So why is it important to have these tools be open source if the proprietary ones work well? Simply put, if you have the source code you can trust your data is kept private and safe but also you can build off the tools and integrate them with other services and tools that work specifically for you.

That being said, I came up with the idea of launching a Open Source Project and have formed a team of amazing individuals who share my vision of creating tools to help the millions of people worldwide suffering from both Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes. We are moving forward with that and are right now in the planning stage of launching the Glucosio Project (Italian for Glucose). The project will initially launch an Android app, then iOS and finally a web app (Think Tizen, Ubuntu Phone, Firefox OS) to allow diabetics to track their glucose and connect with third party services (IFTT, Phillips Hue, Pushbullet, Pushover etc), share the data and better understand the impact of their choices. We very well may expand as the project and contributor base but this is what we have envisioned so far.

I would like to thank Elio Qoshi, Satyajit Sahoo, Paolo Rotolo, Georgi Karavasilev, Priyanka Nag, Joshua Fogg, Viking Karwur, Stefan Angelov, Rahul Kondi and Ahmar Siddiqui for sharing this vision with me and joining as initial project contributors and the core team that will be behind the Glucosio Project.

We still have room for more (Dev, Doc, Creative, l10n etc) and if you are interested in contributing to this project please get in touch with us at hello [at] glucosio.org or follow the project on Github. We hope to make a big difference in many people’s lives with the apps we are working on and hope you will join us!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BenjaminKerensaDotComMozilla/~3/U7DMxzKIrpA/the-glucosio-project