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= Debian Med: Integrated software environment for all medical purposes based on Debian GNU/Linux =

by Andreas Tille, Steffen Möller, Michael Hanke, Yaroslav Halchenko

== Abstract/Summary ==

The Debian Med project started in 2002 with the objective to bring free medi-
cal software into the focus of users. Those may be IT service providers for smaller
clinics, the doctors themselves, researchers in pre-clinical environments or just
skilled enthusiasts with an ambition to apply their talents to the biomedical do-
main. At that time, the communities in computational biology, medical imaging
and medical informatics already had a number of high-quality Free Software so-
lutions. Debian as a Linux distribution provided a solid foundation for bringing
those products together. To assure complete coverage and harmonic integration,
the Debian Med project was initiated to provide a software management infras-
tructure to improve communication among Debian package maintainers, e.g. to
identify missing glue packages to translate data formats or to point out conflicts in
the naming of binaries.
Over the past decade, the integrative Debian Med project has proven to have
positive effects beyond the scope of Debian users. Many ties have been established
between original software developers and Debian package maintainers. Large de-
velopment teams started to upload their Debian packages directly. That communi-
cated the experience of the developers back into the distribution and made medical
software a constituent member of the Debian distribution.
The ideas behind the Debian Med generalised into the concept of Debian Pure
Blends. Blends, such as Debian Edu, Debian Science, DebiChem (chemistry),
Debian GIS, DeMuDi etc., were created to provide a targeted appearance of the
Debian distribution for different domains of applications. Today, Blend task pages
complement canonical Debian package listings with additional information (e.g.
scientific references) and also cover software products that are relevant for a given
domain, but not yet integrated into Debian. A growing community with continu-
ously improving maintenance procedures eases direct contributions to Debian, thus
preventing unnecessary fractioning of the open-source community, and allow for
supporting customised versions of Debian, such as Debian Med, within the Debian
ecosystem.

== References ==
## Use description list format: " What:: where"

 PDF:: http://people.debian.org/~tille/talks/201104_luxembourg/paper/debian-med.pdf


== Citation ==

Tille, A., Möller, S., Hanke, M. & Halchenko, Y. O. (2011). Debian Med: Integrated software environment for all medical purposes based on Debian GNU/Linux. In Jordanova, M. & Lievens, F. (Eds.), Global Telemedicine and eHealth Updates: Knowledge Resources, Vol. 4. Luxembourg: ISfTeH.

=== BIBTeX ===
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{{{
@InProceedings{
        author = "Andreas Tille and Steffen Moeller and Michael Hanke and Yaroslav O. Halchenko",
        title = "Debian Med: Integrated software environment for all medical purposes based on Debian GNU/Linux",
        booktitle = "Global Telemedicine and eHealth Updates: Knowledge Resources",
        editor = "M. Jordanova and F. Lievens",
        publisher = "ISfTeH",
        address = "Luxembourg",
        year = 2011
}
}}}

== Comments ==

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