Breathing Games Joins Open Source Initiative

PALO ALTO, Calif. - June 21, 2016 - PRLog -- The Open Source Initiative® (OSI), recognized globally for promoting and protecting open source software and development communities, announced today that Breathing Games has become an affiliate member. Breathing Games is an international, multidisciplinary community working to improve the quality of health care and life expectancy for people with respiratory disease through therapeutic, science-based-and fun-games.

With one person in five now affected by chronic respiratory diseases-asthma, obstructive disease, and cystic fibrosis among many others-creating effective and engaging patient therapies is an increasingly challenging public health care issue. Patients, especially children, often perceive effective, traditional breathing exercises as boring and tedious. Poor patient compliance results in additional hospitalizations and increased costs. Research shows health-based gaming delivers promising results in positively changing behaviors and influencing health care practices.

To extend services and improve outcomes to these patients, Breathing Games fosters collaboration and contributions between stakeholders - health care providers, patient associations, universities and industry - by creating open source gaming software and devices for repository therapy.

"Once again, exemplified by Breathing Games' work, we see how open source software and the inherent qualities of open source development-community, collaboration and co-creation-extend resources and spur innovation across industries," said Patrick Masson, general manager of the Open Source Initiative.

"Global challenges can only be met if people and organizations collaborate. We believe open source is an essential framework for building sustainable, high-performance applications," said Fabio Balli, lead coordinator for Breathing Games. "The Open Source Initiative is the recognized leader in advocating for open source software. Joining this network was an obvious decision for us to further build on and share or (our?) work, and emphasizes our continued commitment to open collaboration."

The OSI Affiliate Member Program (http://opensource.org/affiliates), is available at no-cost to non-profits; educational institutions and government agencies and independent groups with a commitment to open source - that support OSI's mission to raise awareness and adoption of open source software and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open source community.

About Breathing Games

Breathing Games transforms breathing therapy into games. As a community hosted by local non-profit structures (the Canadian Academy for the Knowledge Economy in Quebec and the Praneo Foundation in Switzerland), the international initiative promotes breathing health by co-creating fun, science-based games. Breathing Games' community of software developers and health care professionals create open source software, devices and standards enabling anyone to build research-based games to improve patient outcomes. Learn more at http://breathinggames.net.

About The Open Source Initiative

Founded in 1998, the Open Source Initiative protects and promotes open source by providing a foundation for community success. It champions open source in society through education, infrastructure and collaboration. The OSI is a California public benefit corporation, with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. For more information about the OSI, please visit: https://opensource.org.