Open Source Initiative, Breathing Games collaborate by creating open source gaming software

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) announced that Breathing Games an international community working to improve the quality of health care and life expectancy for people with respiratory disease through therapeutic, science-based-and fun-games, had become an affiliate member.

With one person in five now affected by chronic respiratory diseases-asthma, obstructive disease, and cystic fibrosis among many others-creating effective and engaging patient therapies is an increasingly challenging public health care issue. Patients, especially children, often perceive effective, traditional breathing exercises as boring and tedious. Poor patient compliance results in additional hospitalizations and increased costs. Research shows health-based gaming delivers promising results in positively changing behaviors and influencing health care practices.

“Once again, exemplified by Breathing Games’ work, we see how open source software and the inherent qualities of open source development-community, collaboration and co-creation-extend resources and spur innovation across industries,” said Patrick Masson, general manager of the Open Source Initiative.

To extend services and improve outcomes to these patients, Breathing Games fosters collaboration and contributions between stakeholders – health care providers, patient associations, universities and industry – by creating open source gaming software and devices for repository therapy.

“Global challenges can only be met if people and organizations collaborate. We believe open source is an essential framework for building sustainable, high-performance applications,” said Fabio Balli, lead coordinator for Breathing Games. “The Open Source Initiative is the recognized leader in advocating for open source software. Joining this network was an obvious decision for us to further build on and share or (our?) work, and emphasizes our continued commitment to open collaboration.”

The OSI Affiliate Member Program (http://opensource.org/affiliates), is available at no-cost to non-profits; educational institutions and government agencies and independent groups with a commitment to open source – that support OSI’s mission to raise awareness and adoption of open source software and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open source community.