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Healthcare · head to head

GNU Health vs Therapixel

GNU Health logo

GNU Health

Healthcare

Free hospital and health information system from a small NGO, built on the Tryton framework

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Therapixel logo

Therapixel

Healthcare

French mammography AI with FDA clearances for 2D and tomosynthesis breast screening

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only GNU Health has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: GNU Health development depends on GNU Solidario, a very small nonprofit funded by donations and training, so release cadence and long-term continuity are tied to a handful of people rather than to an engineering organisation.; Therapixel european and American regulatory positions were established under different regimes, and under the EU Medical Device Regulation this class of diagnostic AI faces a higher classification and notified body scrutiny, so European buyers must verify the current MDR certificate and expiry rather than relying on a legacy CE reference.
  • They diverge on capability: GNU Health covers Electronic medical record, Therapixel covers MammoScreen 2D.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which GNU Health and Therapixel actually diverge.

Attributes where GNU Health and Therapixel differ
AttributeGNU HealthTherapixel
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feequote
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsLinux, Web, Self-hostedWeb

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated), category (Healthcare).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in GNU Health

  • Electronic medical record
  • Hospital management
  • Laboratory information system
  • Social medicine modules
  • Tryton business modules
  • Health federation
  • ICD and standards support
  • Modular installation

Only in Therapixel

  • MammoScreen 2D
  • MammoScreen DBT
  • One to ten suspicion score
  • Summary report
  • Workstation and PACS delivery
  • Reading workflow configurations

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

GNU Health

  • A public hospital in a low-resource setting that cannot fund commercial EMR licensing and has in-house Linux capabilitynot Therapixel
  • A ministry building a national health network where source code inspection and data sovereignty are policy requirementsnot Therapixel
  • A university teaching health informatics that needs a complete, inspectable system rather than a vendor demonstrationnot Therapixel
  • A community health programme that needs socioeconomic determinants recorded alongside clinical datanot Therapixel

Therapixel

  • A European breast screening programme running mandatory double reading that wants to evaluate AI as a concurrent or second reader within what national guidance permitsnot GNU Health
  • An American breast centre that has moved to tomosynthesis and needs reading support on DBT specifically, which Therapixel holds a clearance fornot GNU Health
  • A screening service wanting a graded suspicion score rather than a binary flag so readers can calibrate their own thresholdnot GNU Health
  • A radiology group evaluating multiple mammography AI vendors head to head on their own historic case set before committingnot GNU Health

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

GNU Health

  • Development depends on GNU Solidario, a very small nonprofit funded by donations and training, so release cadence and long-term continuity are tied to a handful of people rather than to an engineering organisation.
  • It is built on Tryton, a framework few health IT staff know, so hiring or contracting people who can extend and maintain it is materially harder than for a mainstream stack.
  • Installation, upgrades and database administration assume Linux and Python competence, which puts the real cost on staffing rather than on licensing and defeats hospitals that lack that team.
  • The interface is functional rather than designed, and clinician acceptance is a genuine deployment risk compared with commercial systems that have invested heavily in usability.
  • Certification, regulatory conformance and interoperability testing that some jurisdictions demand of clinical systems are not provided by a vendor, so the adopting institution has to carry that work and that liability itself.

Therapixel

  • European and American regulatory positions were established under different regimes, and under the EU Medical Device Regulation this class of diagnostic AI faces a higher classification and notified body scrutiny, so European buyers must verify the current MDR certificate and expiry rather than relying on a legacy CE reference.
  • MammoScreen does mammography only, so a hospital wanting AI across head CT, chest and breast needs several vendors and several PACS integrations, or an orchestration layer bought from someone else.
  • Therapixel is a small French company competing against Hologic and iCAD, which have incumbency inside the mammography reading workstation, so integration into an American breast centre is more work than it is for the workstation vendor own AI.
  • Detection performance is sensitive to the mammography unit vendor and acquisition protocol, so published results do not transfer between estates and each site needs local validation it must fund itself.
  • Whether AI can substitute for one of two human readers is a national workforce and liability question, not a product capability, so the labour saving that justifies the purchase in one country is not permitted in another.

Pricing, plan by plan

GNU Health

Free
  • GNU HealthFree
    • GNU GPL licence
    • All modules included
    • No patient, bed or user limits
  • Support and training$undefined/year
    • Paid support and implementation from GNU Solidario
    • Training courses and certification
    • Quoted per institution

Therapixel

On request
  • MammoScreen$undefined/year
    • Priced per examination or by annual screening volume
    • 2D and tomosynthesis licensed by the versions cleared for each
    • Cloud or on premises deployment quoted differently

Which should you pick?

Choose GNU Health if

  • You need electronic medical record.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Web, Self-hosted.
  • You also want hospital management.
GNU Health review

Choose Therapixel if

  • You need mammoscreen 2d.
  • You also want mammoscreen dbt.
Therapixel review

Questions people ask

Is GNU Health or Therapixel better?
Neither clearly leads. GNU Health starts at Free and Therapixel at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, GNU Health or Therapixel?
GNU Health has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for GNU Health and On request for Therapixel.
Does GNU Health or Therapixel run on more platforms?
GNU Health runs on Linux, Web, Self-hosted. Therapixel runs on Web.
Can I use GNU Health for free?
Yes. GNU Health has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Therapixel starts at On request.
What is GNU Health best used for?
GNU Health is most often used for a public hospital in a low-resource setting that cannot fund commercial emr licensing and has in-house linux capability, a ministry building a national health network where source code inspection and data sovereignty are policy requirements, a university teaching health informatics that needs a complete, inspectable system rather than a vendor demonstration, a community health programme that needs socioeconomic determinants recorded alongside clinical data. Of those, a public hospital in a low-resource setting that cannot fund commercial emr licensing and has in-house linux capability and a ministry building a national health network where source code inspection and data sovereignty are policy requirements are not what Therapixel is typically brought in for.
What can GNU Health do that Therapixel cannot?
GNU Health covers Electronic medical record, Hospital management, Laboratory information system, Social medicine modules. Therapixel covers MammoScreen 2D, MammoScreen DBT, One to ten suspicion score, Summary report.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

GNU Health: Who develops GNU Health?

GNU Solidario, a Spanish nonprofit NGO, as an official GNU package under the GPL.

Therapixel: Is MammoScreen FDA cleared?

Yes. It holds 510(k) clearance K192854 for two dimensional mammography from July 2020, a November 2021 clearance for digital breast tomosynthesis, and two further clearances in October 2024 for later versions.

GNU Health: Is there commercial support?

Yes, in a limited form, from GNU Solidario itself and a small number of implementers. It is not a vendor support organisation.

Therapixel: Is it CE marked?

Yes, but European buyers should ask specifically for the current certificate under the Medical Device Regulation and its expiry date, because this class of diagnostic AI moved to a higher classification under MDR.

GNU Health: What is it built on?

Tryton, a Python business application framework, which is where its accounting, stock and HR modules come from.

Therapixel: What does the one to ten score mean?

It is a graded suspicion score per finding and per study, designed to be integrated alongside a radiologist BI-RADS assessment rather than treated as a positive or negative result.

GNU Health: Is it suitable for a large hospital?

It is deployed in hospitals, but the deciding factor is whether you have internal Linux, Python and Tryton capability rather than the size of the institution.

Therapixel: Does it cover anything besides mammography?

No. It is a mammography product only, including tomosynthesis. Other body regions need a different vendor.

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