[Bioperl-l] medperl, something kinda like bioperl

[Spiros Denaxas]

Hello,

I am sending this email here since I consider all people that contribute
and/or follow the bioperl project as the best starting point for advice on a
new project I am currently planning ; my apologies if its considered
off-topic.

While the bioinformatics community has greatly benefitted from the Perl
community, with the shining example of bioperl, the medical community is
sadly a bit behind. I am currently employed in a public health /
epidemiology environment and have under numerous occasions discovered
opportunities to contribute code to CPAN that has made my life easier. I
know I am not alone, but a very quick search on CPAN for related modules
form the medical / biomedical domain does not return much for now.

I recently gave a presentation at the London Perl Workshop [1] and while
creating it, I thought, would it be useful to have something similar to
bioperl for modules which largely contribute to the medical /
epidemiological domain? I was thinking of creating something like medperl,
alas similar to bioperl, but in a very very simple form. It would serve as a
reference point to the (albeit small) numbers of modules that are currently
on CPAN and will also hopefully urge people to contribute some of their code
along the way.

So I would like to request your advice on:

a) Can you think of any reasons for not doing this?
b) Does anybody know of something similar?
c) Does anybody feel like they could contribute?

Regards,
Spiros Denaxas

[1]
http://www.slideshare.net/spirosd/perl-cures-coronary-heart-disease-lpw2010