Re: Status of the Medicine Database
Andreas Tille <tillea@rki.de> writes:
> > A few months ago, you wrote the maintainer/author of a particular
> > application that allowed the user in look-up medications and find out
> > information about this. As I recall, the gist of the letter was a
> > query to determine it's license so that it could be included with
> > Debian.
> >
> > I am wondering what the outcome of the above-mentioned
> > correspondence was?
> I remember that something was discussed here. I think if someone
> would have told me that there is a thing we use with a DFSG-free
> license than I would have put it on our TODO-list (i.e. the Debian-Med
> web pages). But I did not and so I'm afraid nobody cared about :-(.
>
> Could some interested person please do some research if there is a
> free license. Perhaps the people on debian-legal can help to find
> the right decision. Sorry, I currently do not have the slightes
> time slice to investigate here. :-(
This is the letter on the archive is what I am referring to:
<http://lists.debian.org/debian-med/2002/debian-med-200209/msg00001.html>
Did the author, Alex Caldwell M.D., ever reply?
I am curious about the data itself; this is good stuff:
lortab
acetaminophen/hydrocodone
(500/2.5)
Adult Dosing
pain, mild-moderate
[1-2 tabs PO q4-6h prn]
Max: 8 tabs/24h
Peds Dosing
Peds dosing is currently unavailable or not applicable for this drug.
Contraind/Caut.
hypersens. to drug/class/compon.
depressed respiratory fxn
caution if head injury
(etc)
I am just wondering where he pulled it from and if it is public
domain/free. If he did not reply, I shall write him myself if you
like.
> > I personally have been looking at Sleepycat's new XML Database
> > product which is in the alpha stage. Perhaps glancing is a better word
> > for it as I have not been able to compile it although from what I
> > understand there is a simple fix. The goal, though, would be to place
> > the free drug data (the basic raw data) from the FDA within a
> > Sleepycat XML databases so it could be shipped with Debian with a
> > dependency upon the Sleepycat XML-DB.
> >
> > Do you still see a need for this?
> I have to relay on medical experts if there is a need for a certain
> product. If it is free I try to package it (or try find other
> people who might do the packaging stuff).
Thank you Andreas.
This does seem like a nice way to work with the data, as opposed to a
web-app. I wonder if we could just place the data in a Berkeley XML DB
and then we (or someone else may write one soon), a generic Berkeley
XML-DB viewer (updater, etc). Just wondering out loud about it but it
is neat that he put the data in XML.
Elizabeth
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