To celebrate the success of this program, we are excited to announce the official launch of the Open Healthware site :https://healthware.oshwa.org/
August 5th, 2026 — The Open Healthware program, an initiative run by the Open Source Hardware Organization (OSHWA), fostering collaboration and innovation in health and open hardware, has successfully concluded its development program. This program, funded by a POSE 3 grant from the National Science Foundation, brought together practitioners, makers, researchers and companies producing open source hardware for health across the world. We are proud to announce the availability of the Healthware website and the new Healthware certification process as part of the initiative.
Over the past two years the OSHWA has gathered people from across the healthware spectrum together to advance the field of open source hardware in the health and medical sphere. Through numerous workshops, discussion groups, two Open Healthware Conferences in 2025 and 2026, and many conversations we have developed a process that speaks to the unique task of open sourcing a health device.
During this work we have found that Healthware can refer to a large number of projects; from 3D printed assistive tools to implantable Class 3 medical devices, and even simple, accessible tourniquet designs for on the ground use. Healthware encompasses a large scope of projects. We were able to work with this community to find the key to bring these incredible projects together into one database to create an accessible listing for anyone who wishes to build them.
Similarly to our main certification database, users will submit a form containing information about their project. We ask for basic information, project information, licensing information and provide information about the use of certification marks. For the Healthware certification process there is an extended project information section that also looks for the intended use case, risk class, state of development and other information that we found was necessary for a health device to be open sourced.
The official Open Source Healthware site now holds all our resource documents, such as Best Practices for Releasing Open Healthware designs and Replicating Open Healthware designs, a section to learn everything we have gathered about the state of Open Healthware and the database listings.
This website will provide a perfect starting point for anyone who is looking to participate in, access, create and build in the world of Open Healthware. We look forward to maintaining and updating with more resources as we develop them.
OSHWA is incredibly proud of the work accomplished by the Open Healthware community. This development program would not have been possible without the tremendous support and engagement from so many exceptional groups and people.
For more information and to explore the deliverables from the Open Healthware site.
The Open Healthware development program was made possible with funding from a POSE 3 grant from the National Science Foundation.
Contact Information: Alicia Gibb Seidle, founder and executive director, OSHWA alicia[at]oshwa.org Email us at info[at]oshwa.org
