General Questions¶

Answer

This is a great question! While a detailed answer would be quite lengthy, here are a few distinguishing features of Leaf:

Open - Leaf's codebase is open to the community, and you can use, change, and deploy Leaf as you'd like
Adaptable to any data model - Leaf does not assume your data is structured in any particular way
Use on your terms - Leaf never "phones home", and runs completely on your hardware. No data leaves your servers (besides exports from users, which can be disabled)
Free! - We develop and use Leaf internally at the University of Washington and share with the community in the hopes of improving healthcare and collaboration
Modern and fun - Leaf uses a cutting-edge development stack (ReactJS, TypeScript, .NET Core) that allows for a fun, intuitive user experience that we believe meets or exceeds that of comparable commercial products (which you would pay for, either in software-as-a-service fees or by allowing external use of your data)

Answer

Absolutely! Leaf can take time to install and wanting to "kick the tires" is understandable. Here are two options, depending on your preference:

If you would like to run Leaf on your local computer, check the Testing Leaf page for instructions.
If you'd prefer jump in and try Leaf with synthetic data, please contact us at leafsupport@uw.edu, as we have several Leaf instances with synthetic data used for demonstration purposes and hosted at the University of Washington. While we'd like to have these available on the internet without making you jump through hoops, for various security reasons we ask that you just reach out to us and let us know you're interested, after which we'll grant you access.