Monday, November 14, 2011
ANSI Standards for Glucose Meters and Open Source Software
What the world needs is glucose meter software which
will run on any platform, especially Gnu/Linux (Ubuntu)
which will talk to an IOGEAR USB-Serial adapter
and which will work with any glucose meter capable of
RS232 communication. GUC232A uses the Prolific 2303 chipset.
All manufactures of meters (e.g. Abbott Labs) should be encouraged
to adopt a uniform standard to allow the creation of
a universal software.
Manufactures in general should begin to take Linux seriously and
not develop simply for proprietary software (Microsoft, Apple)
Sourceforge.net might be a logical place to start.
David Weisgerber started a project Glucomodul Project around 2002 but may no longer
be active.
I suggest that IOGEAR manufacture a simple RS232 device which
programmers may use to TEST
Serial adapter GUC232A so that Linux programmers may
become fluent in routines which talk to devices using
the IOGEAR GUC232A
Efforts should be made to publicize this project on the internet and perhaps
even establish a contest similar to Google's yearly programmer contest, perhaps with a scholarship as a prize.
All the technology and expertice already exists to make such open source
universtal glucose meter software possible. Companies can cooperate
to establish ANSI standards for connections, specifications, protocols and it should all be available in public domain.
There is plenty of money to be made in service and support in the open source world of MySQL and PostgreSQL without becoming proprietary.
The bulk of the Internet technology is already driven by Linux, Apache, PhP, Python, etc.
