| Currently, efforts have focused on dealing with the emerging coronavirus disease
2019 (COVID-19) worldwide. Hopefully, information technology can be applied to
meet the challenges related to the pandemic and biosurveillance. Free and opensource
software (FOSS) model has emerged as an effective tool against these
challenges. The main objective of this study was to determine and summarize the
application of FOSS in published and released resources and materials against
COVID-19. This review includes projects that were available through GitHub and
SourceForge reliable web-based materials. All projects were identified between
January 1 and April 10, 2020. Search terms in GitHub and SourceForge were based
on clinical terminologies, such as COVID-19, COVID, Covid19, and Corona Virus.
Inclusion or exclusion criteria were used to filter the results. Finally, a screening
procedure was followed to achieve the most related records. We identified 46,426
records in GitHub and seven projects in SourceForge. The top 40 projects were
included. The results show that a high percentage of FOSS projects against COVID-
19 were related to visual dashboards. The open dataset and analytical methods made
a significant contribution to this context. Previously learned lessons from FOSS
have shown that the explained projects would play important roles in future
epidemics by forking and joining in new projects, which formed around a specific
problem. |