The benefits of open source software use are not restricted to up-and-coming businesses and forward-thinking municipal governments in the developed world.

While it's great that the technology can provide a relief to stretched budgets in those cases, it can also provide much more critical assistance in developing countries, where IT systems can directly impact medical aid and other humanitarian efforts, according to a report from Wired magazine.

Problems caused by a lack of trained medical personnel in Nigeria, for example, are exacerbated by poor record keeping and technological availability, the publication said. One group, however, is working to create a medical database - based on open source software technology - to help overworked caregivers in the African country maintain better records.

The system being developed by Evelyn Castle and Adam Thompson and their eHealth Nigeria nonprofit is based on the OpenMRS format, which was created in 2004, the news source said.

A relatively low level of computer literacy poses a formidable barrier to adoption, Castle told the publication, meaning that a complex commercial product is unlikely to produce the desired results.

"We have to start them with, how do you use a mouse. Introducing a Microsoft or a Kaiser platform is not going to work for them. The software we use is a lot more simplistic and a lot more user friendly," she said in an interview.

Fortunately, OpenMRS was designed with such concerns in mind, according to Wired. Initially conceived by researchers working on similar healthcare issues in Kenya, the database is meant to offer a high degree of flexibility and user-friendliness without compromising on required functionality.

Andrew Karlyn, a former Nigeria country director for the Population Council, said that the problem of technological savvy is not confined to the African nation.

"If you've got a barely literate medical technician, who only knows how to use a microscope to look for Malaria and fill in a form, you can't just put a fancy computer in front of him and expect him to use it," he told the news source.

Castle and Thompson's project has broken new ground, as well, thanks to some innovative capabilities designed to take advantage of the actual conditions in place in Nigeria.

The system has an SMS gateway, which leverages the fact that cellphones are far more common than personal computers in the region, to allow easier communication with patients and healthcare workers, Wired reported. The two are currently working on integrating more than 45 individual facilities into their systems' network in order to provide more efficient and effective services for HIV-positive women in the area.

All of this potentially life-saving functionality is contained in a relatively tiny space, the magazine added. In stark contrast to the gigantic server farms and other major facilities that dot North America, Europe and Asia, the entire healthcare database is run from a single rack the size of a small cabinet. It uses only a few AMD Opteron servers, which require little power.

The use of open source software for humanitarian purposes is a well-recognized phenomenon, experts say, and one that is recognized by major players in the community like the Free Software Foundation. That group, since 2005, has handed out an annual honor for projects that use the open model's ideas to promote the general good of humanity, known as the Projects of Social Benefit award. The FSF's first winner was Wikipedia, and the most recent recipient was the Tor Project.