GNUmed aims to provide medical software that respects the privacy of patients and that is based on open standards.

GNUmed is based on third party projects such as free software/open source DBMS PostgreSQL and is written mostly in Python.

Several other developers joined the team and helped at one time or the other: Syan Tan, Ian Haywood, Hilmar Berger, Sebastian Hilbert, Carlos Moro, Michael Bonert, Richard Terry, Tony Lembke and many more.

While some concentrated on coding, many others, like Jim Busser and Rogerio Luz Coelho helped by creating documentation or by submitting other comments.

The name was initially chosen to give credit to the GNU project and GNUmed's connection to the medical profession.