The International Workshop on e-health in Emerging Economies (IWEEE) keeps getting better on each edition ! This time we celebrated it during the days 11th and 12th of January in Granada, Spain.

IWEEE is organized by GNU Solidario, and it has become the central point to discuss  Free Software in Health . 

As our friend Cesar Brod mentioned, IWEEE 2012 has been the most successful and collaborative of all. Two days of very interesting presentations and a very productive round table.

In this two-days event, we had been honored by the delegates of the following institutions :

• United Nations University (UNU)
• Doctors Without Borders (MSF)
• United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
• Government of Brazil
• Government of Paraguay
• International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA)
• European Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI)
• Free Software Community : Brodtec, Domatix, FSF, NaN, Nextma and Thymbra

These two days have been very busy, with many great presentations and a fruitful round table, were we have set up goals to achieve in this year 2012, in terms of free software adoption in ehealth, standards, implementations, documentation, mobile integration and interoperability, among others.

Thanks to the United Nations delegates, to Raúl Zambrano from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and to Dr. Salleh, Dr. Syed and Dr. Nurhizam from United Nations University, Institute of Global Health, not only for their active role in their presentations and round table, but for sponsoring the event.

Thank you Inma, Anne, Thang, Manuel and Ludovic from Doctors without Borders. Having MSF among us is very motivating. You are an example to follow inside and outside the field. We all learn a lot from your experience and suggestions !

Thank you to the representatives of Latin America governments. Cesar Brod, from the government of Brazil, who has been present since the first edition of IWEEE, and the hosts of IWEEE Brazil for all these years. Thank you all to our friends from the government of Paraguay, to Nicolas Caballero who proposed the IWEEE in Granada, and to Dr. Gamarra, who was the delegate of Paraguay Ministry of Health at the round table. This shows how the South has taken the lead in adopting Free Software.

Ironically, there was nobody from the Andalusian Autonomous Government (Junta de Andalucía). Hopefully next time we’ll have them. It would have been nice to share and discuss with them what is being done in e-health using Free Software.

Thank you Thomas Karopka and Etienne Saliez, also “founding fathers” of IWEEE, whose contribution and participation since the first edition has been key for the increasing success of IWEEE. Thank you Frank Lievens (Medetel) for coming over and for promoting the conference over these years !

Thanks to the Free Software community, represented by Joice Käfer (Brodtec); Albert Cervera (NaN); Carlos Sánchez; Pablo José (FSF);Nacho, Angel and Roberto (Domatix), and Adbrahman from NEXTMA, from Morocco. We need to keep on growing this community to be able to deliver solutions to more institutions and improve the quality of the current eHealth systems.