ArticleJournal of medical Internet research2007
A survey of quality assurance practices in biomedical open source software projects.
Article in Journal of medical Internet research, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- PipeVal: light-weight extensible tool for file validation.Bioinformatics (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
- A choice, not an obligation : Releasing scientific software as open source should be the responsibility of the authors.EMBO reports · 2024Article
- Transforming health and well-being through publishing computable biomedical knowledge (CBK).Learning health systems · 2023Article
- Improving bioinformatics software quality through incorporation of software engineering practices.PeerJ. Computer science · 2022Article
- A comparison of physician pre-adoption and adoption views on electronic health records in Canadian medical practices.Journal of medical Internet research · 2011Article
- Quality assurance for the query and distribution systems of the RCSB Protein Data Bank.Database : the journal of biological databases and curation · 2011Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundOpen source (OS) software is continuously gaining recognition and use in the biomedical domain, for example, in health informatics and bioinformatics.
objectivesGiven the mission critical nature of applications in this domain and their potential impact on patient safety, it is important to understand to what degree and how effectively biomedical OS developers perform standard quality assurance (QA) activities such as peer reviews and testing. This would allow the users of biomedical OS software to better understand the quality risks, if any, and the developers to identify process improvement opportunities to produce higher quality software.
methodsA survey of developers working on biomedical OS projects was conducted to examine the QA activities that are performed. We took a descriptive approach to summarize the implementation of QA activities and then examined some of the factors that may be related to the implementation of such practices.
resultsOur descriptive results show that 63% (95% CI, 54-72) of projects did not include peer reviews in their development process, while 82% (95% CI, 75-89) did include testing. Approximately 74% (95% CI, 67-81) of developers did not have a background in computing, 80% (95% CI, 74-87) were paid for their contributions to the project, and 52% (95% CI, 43-60) had PhDs. A multivariate logistic regression model to predict the implementation of peer reviews was not significant (likelihood ratio test = 16.86, 9 df, P = .051) and neither was a model to predict the implementation of testing (likelihood ratio test = 3.34, 9 df, P = .95).
conclusionsLess attention is paid to peer review than testing. However, the former is a complementary, and necessary, QA practice rather than an alternative. Therefore, one can argue that there are quality risks, at least at this point in time, in transitioning biomedical OS software into any critical settings that may have operational, financial, or safety implications. Developers of biomedical OS applications should invest more effort in implementing systemic peer review practices throughout the development and maintenance processes.
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