"An increasing number of medical centres in Canada and abroad are turning to an Ontario-made open source tool that pools 'anonymized' patient data across secure Web sites worldwide.
"First developed by Dr. David Chan in Hamilton, Ont., the Open Source Clinical Application & Resources (OSCAR) is being touted by some in the medical community as an online reference tool that improves critical diagnostic and therapeutic decisions made daily by medical practitioners.
"For example, if a patient is pregnant and has diabetes, the caregiver can link to OSCAR to access the records of patients who fall into the same category, explained Joseph Dal Molin, founder of the Open Source Health Care Alliance, following a presentation on OSCAR last month at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) in Ottawa. In doing so, physicians can base all treatment decisions during the entire pregnancy on what’s been done in the past by other maternity experts, he said..."
