Metapackages are Debian packages with practically no real content. They just contain dependencies on other Debian packages. As such, if you want to install a meta package which depends on a collection of medical software for a certain task all these packages have to be installed to resolve the dependencies of the meta package.
As a consequence, no research for available medical software is necessary. Simply installing the appropriate metapackage will install all necessary stuff. Therefore, the user is not forced to browse the whole package list of Debian, which contains more than 10.000 packages and thus would definitely confuse a normal user because he does only need a very limited subset of this amount of packages.
The simple technique of installing all packages covering a certain tasks allows easy comparison between software covering the same task. This allows users to find out which one fits their habits best.
Metapackages have a further advantage: they make the system safe against accidental removal of packages which might be useful to solve certain tasks.
A further option is to declare conflicts on incompatible packages. For instance it might seem sane to install only one practice management system in one medical practice so as not to confuse patient databases. So it has to made sure that only one such system is installed.
Thus, meta packages are a useful tool for easy installation of a reliable system with low administration effort. The technique of meta packages and how to use them optimally is explained in detail in a paper about Custom Debian Distributions by Andreas Tille.
Meta packages might contain adapted configuration to adapt certain packages to work best for the intended use. In this way it is possible to care for the special needs of Debian-Med users.
As explained above, documentation is one important goal of Debian-Med. Consequently, packaging and creating of relevant documentation is an important part of the Debian-Med project.
As for translation, it might be reasonable to use the technology of the Debian Description Translation Project.
Normally there are many more applications available on a computer than an average user would need. On the other hand, not all application should necessarily be available for all users. This brings some role concept into mind.
So Debian-Med defines the group med which administrators can easily
managed via debconf. When installing the package
med-common, on which all Debian-Med packages depend, the
system administrator defines a group of medicine users. These users
will be presented with an extra menu "Med" which just contains
the medical applications which are installed on the system. This
makes it easy to concentrate on the tasks the users want to solve.
Moreover users of role med could have extra configuration
which prepares the applications for optimal use.
Other users which are not members of the group med will not be
bothered with this additional stuff.
Debian-Med does not develop medical software.
This is a frequently asked question because interested people often think that the Debian-Med project aims to develop medical software. This is wrong. As Debian is just a distribution of third party Free Software in general, Debian-Med just maintains for the part of Debian which is useful for medical care.
So Debian-Med is just responsible for smooth integration of third party medical software into Debian. This software is developed by other people which generally are happy that their software is distributed with the well known Debian GNU/Linux distribution.