Skip to content

Open Health Technology Foundation

A neutral, long-term home for open-source health software

OHTF stewards the open-source software that health care runs on: clinical terminologies, identifier and terminology tooling, clinical calculators and health records. Open code, named maintainers, and an organisation that outlasts any one employer.

See the projects Why OHTF exists Join the mailing list
nhs-number, an OHTF Foundation Project.

Open Health Technology Foundation

Software that health care depends on should be open, free from the control of any single vendor, and maintained in public. Public money should buy public code.

The gap OHTF fills

Health technology has standards bodies, professional bodies, policy organisations and large general-purpose software foundations. None of them is a practical, health-specific home for the open-source software that working developers and clinicians actually depend on: libraries, terminology tools, clinical calculators and record systems. That software is too important to leave in someone's personal GitHub account, or in an employer's organisation that might disappear. More on why OHTF exists.

What OHTF looks after

OHTF accepts open-source projects that meet four tests:

Vendor-neutral
Useful across products, organisations and countries, not tied to one vendor or one national architecture.
Built for implementers
Working code for developers and clinicians, rather than policy papers or standards artefacts.
Open and maintained
Published under an open licence with named maintainers, a security contact and a clear lifecycle status.
Worth keeping
Software the health system would find costly and risky to lose, or to keep reinventing.

Projects

Foundation Projects are maintained under github.com/ohtf. Candidate projects are public, in active development and going through project onboarding.

Project What it does Status
oct - Open Clinical Terminology An open, community-owned clinical terminology. Foundation Project
NHS Number (Python) Validate, normalise and generate NHS Numbers in Python. Foundation Project
clincalc Open, auditable clinical calculators, each citing primary literature and tested against published vectors. Foundation Project
Digital PEWS A charting and scoring component for the National Paediatric Early Warning System, with SMART on FHIR. Foundation Project
sct A local-first SNOMED CT toolchain: from RF2 release to SQL, Parquet, Markdown and fast local queries. Candidate
GitEHR A decentralised, multi-contributor electronic health record that uses Git as its storage layer. Candidate

See all projects

How a project joins

  1. Propose it. Open a discussion on GitHub describing the project, its users and who maintains it. How to propose a project.
  2. Name the maintainers. Every Foundation Project needs at least one named maintainer, a contribution path and a security contact.
  3. Adopt the basics. An open licence, the code of conduct, DCO sign-off on contributions and a security policy.
  4. Move it under OHTF. The repository transfers to github.com/ohtf, with OHTF holding domains and trademarks where that protects the project's neutrality.

Hosting, support and training

Some health organisations need more than code: a hosted API, an assured deployment, support with a named contact, or training for their team. OHTF can provide these as paid services. The income pays for maintenance, and the underlying code stays open. About OHTF services.

Get involved

  • Join the mailing list for news about OHTF and its projects. It runs on the Open Health Hub forum, where you can sign up and follow announcements.
  • Use the projects and report what breaks. Issues on GitHub are the fastest route.
  • Contribute code or documentation. Start with contributing to OHTF projects.
  • Bring a project that needs a neutral, long-term home: propose a project.
  • Talk to us about partnership, hosting or support: contact OHTF.