After 6 months of work, we are very happy to announce GNU Health 2.6 series. This version improves the navigation, security and data integrity (health_crypto) and audit. It has also been designed to be used in distributed environments, such a network of public hospitals in a province or country.

Here is a partial list of the new features :

* Tryton 3.2 compatibility
* Universal Person Unique Identifier (PUID)
* Additional / alternative identification codes are now stored in
  the person (party) model.
* Crypto module (Document Digest, validation, digital
  signing/verification )
* Crypto tryton plugin (included in the backend directory of the
  tarball)
* Revision of models for Distributed deployments
* Health Archives module
* New Institution model
* Revised health specialties and disease groups
* Remove extra submenus, for usability.
* Revised medication model
* Improved Obstetrics module (eg, automatic obstetric GPA calculation)
* New shortcuts from the Patient and Institution Model.
* Improved Genetics module
* Revised Neonatolgy functionality. Newborn is assigned a PUID at birth
* New directory for custom modules
* Centralized Authentication / LDAP integration
* Audit trails from the client (thanks Tryton 3.2)
* Improved installation script (covers GNU/Linux distros and FreeBSD)
* Of course, upgrade path is included.

There are many other improvements and bug fixes that have not been included in this summary document. You can read the Changelog for a detailed description of all the activity.

** Installation :
—————-
If you are installing GNU Health as the first time, follow the instructions in https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/GNU_Health/Installation

Note : The gnuhealth_install script tries to do a local installation, including the required Python packages. This version updates the python packages to one of the latest stable releases. If you are coming from a dedicated server for GNU Health, and used the official installation script, you should be OK. If you installed packages in a system-wide manner, then you would need to uninstall them before the update, otherwise the installation script won’t be able to upgrade them.

** Existing Installations : Upgrade procedure :
——————————