I'm currently an intern at the Software Freedom Conservancy working with The ChRIS Project. From my experience, ChRIS is a great place for anyone who wants to learn and make a significant difference in the tech OpenSource community and the medical research field.

ChRIS in full stands for the ChRIS Research Integration System. It's an image processing platform that utilizes the software and compute infrastructure of the Mass Open Cloud. I know all this terminology might seem quite intimidating, especially if you're relatively new to Software Development. But the good thing is; I got you 😎.

What problem does The ChRIS Project solve?

The heart of ChRIS was founded in trying to build a collaborative link between Medical researchers, Clinicians, and the technology between them. Doctors have to look at a lot of patients' data daily and come up with reports based on what they see. There could be a more convenient way to handle this. When a patient walks in with an issue, all their data could be pre-loaded and the doctor could do a quick comparison with any prior history they've had. Then, do a big data search of how other patients have dealt with a similar issue. Patients would get more accurate and consistent treatments with time.

ChRIS aims to leverage patients' records to come up with such a system. Awesome, right? ChRIS is the future of medical research. It will accelerate clinical research collaboration and enable researchers to obtain results quickly.

What Excites Me about ChRIS

The ChRIS Project has a team of developers and designers working together to bring this dream to fruition. Everyone is open to helping you out. I used to think that a "good developer" should know everything, but I was completely off. Every person in the team is an expert but in specific sections of the code and they consult each other. Also, as a contributor, I get to see all the approved changes I make in production. In addition to that, the team is always open to new ideas, you'll never feel small or undermined.

I've learned so much in one month than I could've, doing my own projects. For instance, I had no clue about how docker worked when I started. I learned about the ASCIIdoc format of documentation. I've built a site using Next.js which made me embrace the power of prerendering. I also learned new git commands and also pushed wrong commits and messed up some ChRIS codebase along the way...

I didn't fully understand what ChRIS was all about until a month and a half later. I thought it'd be hard to make changes because I had no clue about medicine besides the basic biology taught in school. However, I eased into it. I picked up on jargon like DICOM and PACS %20is%20a%20medical%20imaging,images%20and%20clinically%2Drelevant%20reports) server. Everything is going smoothly so far.

In conclusion

Like any other situation in life, you'll have your highs and lows; don't let that intimidate you. Lean on the people around you and suck in as much positivity as you can. At the end of the day, no one really knows what the heck they're doing, you might as well just keep going.