The Linux Foundation and the OpenTreatments Foundation announced the RareCamp software project will be hosted at the Linux Foundation. The project will provide the source code and open governance for the OpenTreatments software platform to enable patients to create gene therapies for rare genetic diseases. There are 400 million patients worldwide affected by more than 7,000 rare diseases, yet treatments for rare genetic diseases are an underserved area. More than 95 percent of rare diseases do not have an approved treatment, and new treatments are estimated to cost more than $1 billion.
What is the RareCamp software project?
The RareCamp software project is an open-source project that provides open governance for the software and scientific community to collaborate and create the software tools to aid in the creation of treatments for rare diseases. The project is supported by individual contributors, as well as collaborations from companies that include Baylor College of Medicine, Castle IRB, Charles River, Columbus Children’s Foundation, GlobalGenes, Odylia Therapeutics, RARE-X and Turing.com.
Sanath Kumar Ramesh, the founder of the OpenTreatments Foundation and creator of RareCamp, said,
“OpenTreatments and RareCamp decentralize drug development and empowers patients, families and other motivated individuals to create treatments for diseases they care about. We will enable the hand off of these therapies to commercial, governmental and philanthropic entities to ensure patients around the world get access to the therapies for the years to come.”
The community includes software engineers, UX designers, content writers and scientists who are collaborating now to build the software that will power the OpenTreatments platform. The project uses the open-source Javascript framework NextJS for frontend and the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Serverless stack – including AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon DynamoDB – to power the backend. The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source. The OpenTreatments Foundation enables treatments for rare genetic diseases regardless of rarity and geography, today announced the RareCamp software project will be hosted at the Linux Foundation.