Category Archives: GNU Health

Peerless Hospital in Nigeria chooses Medical

02 Friday Oct 2009

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Dear all

We are very happy to announce that Peerless Hospital in Nigeria has chosen Medical for their institution.

I have been contacted by Mr. Agu Chibueze who told me their decision of using Medical to implement their Hospital Information System, as part of the African Health Network.

This non-profit effort is part of the GNU Solidario project, who delivers education and hea lth to emerging economies with free software.

This is part of the team in Nigeria:

  • Agu Chibueze (Computer Scientist)
  • Emmanuel Akpo (Medical Doctor, Surgeon)
  • Chibuike Ugwuoke (Computer Professional)

This is a very challenging project in which we will put all our effort to deliver a system that will optimize their healthcare. We already set up a development server and are working on a daily basis with the Nigerian team.

Many thanks to Agu, Dr. Emmanuel, Chibuike and the Peerless Hospital for their great mission on helping out the people of Nigeria, and for trusting Medical and GNU Solidario.

Here is a letter from Agu Chibueze about the African Health Network that I want to share with you :

THE AFRICAN HEALTH NETWORK

The African Health Network is a new organization with the primary aim of centralizing Electronic Medical Records within Sub-Saharan Africa. The African Health Network plans to achieve this using strictly open source tools. AHN has chosen OpenERP from Tiny and Axelor as their framework of choice and the medical module from Thymbra.

Currently, online healthcare is far beyond the reach of the common African. While the project is expected to be self-financing, AHN has chosen open standards to bring affordable online healthcare to even the poorest of people within the region. The African Health Network hopes to start its operations by the middle of this month. There are three people central to this project, a doctor and two computer professionals. AHN will be starting out with Peerless Hospital and Wellness in Warri, Delta State, Nigeria as the first member hospital and the Global Medical Missions as the first member health organization.

The AHN project is the first of its kind within the region and is bound to face challenges ranging from poor internet connectivity within the region to a low level of computer literacy amongst health professionals. AHN, however has been working out collaborative relationships between Internet service providers and is planning for an effective computer training program for future members of the online network.

CIE-10 for Medical

20 Sunday Sep 2009

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For the spanish speaking friends, we have the CIE-10 (spanish version of ICD-10) available since version 0.0.41 of Medical !
So, at this time, users can choose not only the login language (English, French, German, Spanish, Indonesian .. ) but also the whole WHO / OMS disease list and categories in other languages.

We will be talking about medical at the eHealth 2009 conference, ( http://www.electronic-health.org) this week (Istambul, Turkey, September 23-25th )

Versión CIE-10 en castellano


You can get the latest information from Medical at :

http://medical.sf.net

Remember that Medical is part of the GNU solidario Project, a non-profit effort to deliver education and health to the most needed.

Regards
Luis Falcon

Medical : Sourceforge Project of the Month

01 Tuesday Sep 2009

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Hello there !

Medical, the universal Health and Hospital Information System, has been chosen as Sourceforge’s project of the month.

We are very happy to see the momentum that Medical has gained in this year of life. It’s very interesting and indeed very rewarding.

We’ll be showing the project during September 23rd – 25th in Istambul, Turkey (www.electronic-health.org) and during Octuber 22nd-24th in Foz de Iguazu, Brazil (www.latinoware.org), so I’ll be more than happy to talk to you in person.

Thanks you to all of you who contribute to the project. If you want to participate in the project ( interfaces, documentation, translations, … ) will be more than happy to count with your support.

Remember that Medical is part of the GNU solidario project, a non-profit effort to provide Health and Education to emerging economies.

You can check the whole article at :
http://sourceforge.net/community/potm-200909/

Please let me know any comments or suggestions at medical@thymbra.com

Project homepage : http://medical.sourceforge.net

Thanks
Luis Falcón

Medical 0.0.35 and GNU solidario

19 Wednesday Aug 2009

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Hi there !

I just published medical 0.0.35 in sourceforge. It has many changes and improvements.

– Redesign on the disease note and history forms
– New section on Genetic risks and prevention of vertical transmissions.
– New section on Perinatal and puerperium

You are urged to switch to this version. If you haven’t upgraded to OpenERP 5.0.2, do so before installing Medical, because it’s __way__ faster than the previous version.

You can download it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/medical/

Please check it out and test it as much as you can. Then file all the bugs and feedback on sourceforge.

Medical is part of the GNU solidario project (www.gnusolidario.org). GNU solidario – previously called Linux Solidario – is a non-profit project with the goal of improving the quality of life of the people in developing countries with free software.

If you want to contribute to the project with ideas, coming up with a nice gnu logo that represent the project, etc…, please let us know !

Thanks
Luis

Medical 0.0.34 . It’s all about standards

10 Friday Jul 2009

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Medical: The Universal Health and Hospital Information System

Hello there

Medical version 0.0.34 has just been released !

The most important feature of this version is the addition of ICD-10-PCS.
The International Classification of Diseases tenth revision Procedure Coding System (ICD-10-PCS) will complement the already implemented ICD-10 coding for pathologies. This duple provides a very efficient way of coding for doctors and administrative personnel, making the data interchange between organizations very easy and with a common language, around the world.

In this version of Medical we have the 2009 ICD-10-PCS version, which contains 72589 medical procedures, from surgery to substance administration and monitoring. ICD-10-PCS is the replacement for ICD-9-CM.

In this way, Medical is pioneer by having already the two standard for diagnosis (ICD-10) and procedures (ICD-10-PCS) that are to be adopted by most institutions in the coming years.

This version also has major improvements in dealing with the queries of large tables, modifications on the surgery and patient evaluation and some bug fixes. Check the Changelog for all the modifications.

Check the wiki for the installation instructions at http://medical.wiki.sourceforge.net/

Please file bugs and comments at the sourceforge portal (http://medical.sf.net).

Thanks
Luis Falcon

PS: This version is considerably bigger than the previous ones, so give some time to the database import process 🙂

Thoughts about H1N1, cytokine storm and public health decisions

09 Thursday Jul 2009

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Since the first fatalities related to H1N1 that affected young, healthy people, the cytokine storm theory was raised. And it makes sense. In many cases, after a couple of days, patients would develop severe pneumonia and die in a very short period of time.

The cytokine storm is a over-reaction of the immune system when trying to attack the invader ( in this case, the influenza virus ). The hiper-cytokinemia triggers a positive feedback vicious cycle, releasing a huge amount of pro-inflammatory messengers (Tumor Necrosis Factor – TNF -, and other Interleukins ).

These messengers signal leukocytes ( T-cells, neutrophils… ) to go to the site of infection. Since there is a over-reaction, the white cells action produce damage in the area of action. In the case of the H1N1, in the lung parenchyma.

Now, with several months that H1N1 is among us, and with the experience of the H5N1 (avian flu), in which cytokine storm was the cause of most deaths, my questions are :

– Do we have conclusive evidence (histo-pathological, serum TNF levels, … ) that confirm a cytokine storm in some of the H1N1 patients ?

– Antivirals : They work by inhibiting the virus replication process, so they don’t boost an immune reaction (which is good in this case).

Why don’t give antivirals as a prophylactic measure ? This would minimize the initial immune reaction, and thus, prevent or minimize the possibility of the cytokine storm.

We also know that antivirals work best within the first 24 / 48 hours of symptoms. The idea is to avoid pneumonia in the first place. Medicine is about promotion and prevention, so we should avoid at all costs H1N1 complications. What I see is that in many cases, they wait until there is a serious condition related to the flu to start medicating. It just seems too bad-to-late to me…

– Government Improvisations : I feel like there is a lot of improvisation on the way that certain governments are dealing with this issue. In my personal experience, a couple of days ago my daughter got sick, with fever, sore throat and was negative to the strep test (was viral). When I knew that she was negative for strep, I asked for the antivirals and it was denied, since she was not part of the “risk group”. This of course is not to blame the doctor, but the health officials.

I’m saying this because the same health officials were giving antivirals to everyone that had flu symptoms and, as a prophylactic measure, to their relatives. That was, in my opinion, the right way to go. Unfortunately, that decision lasted only for two days.

So, I had to spend these last two days in a paranoid state checking on my daughter evolution and hoping that it won’t spread to his younger brother.

Why do I have the feeling that high government officials and their kids have the antiviral sitting close to them “just in case”… Anyways… better leave it here…

It would be great if any of you want to make comments or have extra information and shed some light on this subject.

Thanks
Luis Falcon

Latin America gains momentum in Open Source

08 Wednesday Jul 2009

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Great news for all of us open source activists in Latin America.

This year we have three projects “hechos en latinoamérica” that are finalist in sourceforge : Medical (Best Project for Government), Elastix (Best Project for the Enterprise) and Process Maker (Best Commercial Open Source and Best Visual Design)

I want to thank the community and, specially, the organizations like Free Software Foundation (FSF), and great guys like Jon “Maddog” Hall, who have been key for the adoption of the Open Source in Latin America (and worldwide).

Here is a picture from Debconf 2008 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I met with Jon and talked about the Medical project.

Medical is finalist in 2009 Sourceforge Community Awards

24 Wednesday Jun 2009

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I’m very pleased to announce that Medical, the universal Health Information System, is finalist on Sourceforge 2009 Community Awards.

With over 47,000 nominations, the community has chosen 85 finalists in 12 categories. Medical is among the best 10 projects this year for government.

This is very exciting and rewarding. To be among the 10 best projects (sharing the space with projects like Open Office) shows the recognition from the community to humanitarian projects like Medical, and positions open source in health sector, an area limited to proprietary vendors until now.

I would like to extend my gratitude to all the scientists and doctors that are working on the project (from Argentina, Belgium, India, Indonesia, Germany, USA, Uruguay… ) and to all of you who have trust our project by using it, voting it or letting others know that such project exists.

We have a couple of weeks now to make the choice for the winner, so please go to and vote for Medical in the Best project for Government.

vote now

Thanks again and congratulations to all of you that made this happen. We’ll see you at OSCON 2009 (San Jose, California, July 20-24 ) !
Luis Falcon

About Medical

Medical is an open source project with the goal of providing a universal Health Information System, where health professionals and institutions around the world can benefit from it, independently of their economic status.

Medical optimizes collaboration among health professionals, makin emphasis in Primary Care and Family medicine. It makes use of industry standards (ICD-10), which proportionante the basis for epidemiological studies.

Medical has been designed with scalability in mind. It can deal with millions of patients. Any country or NGO can evaluate their habitants conditions, both from the clinical and the socio-economic / sanitary point of view. This helps to early detect hot-spots, disease vectors and epidemics, specially in developing countries.

Doctors, nurses, computer scientist and sociologist from countries like Argentina, Germany, Uruguay, Spain, Belgium, France, United States, India or Indonesia are actively working together to make medical a reference point in medical informatics.

More Info : http://www.thymbra.com/en/solutions/health

Medical Project at Sourceforge : http://medical.sourceforge.net

Medical presentation in Uganda

17 Sunday May 2009

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I just got back from Kampala. I must say it was a great experience.

The congress ( IST-Africa ) was a success and it gave the chance to meet and network with wonderful people (NGOs, doctors, students, … ). Let’s not forget that the main point of these type of events is to help out and work together with the emerging communities and countries. At least that’s what it should be.

That being said, the presentation of Medical HIS and EMR, had very good comments. We explained the way we are implementing on rural Argentina. We are now in contact with local doctors from Africa and they are willing to work on the localisation of Medical for different countries in that continent.

Many health professionals told me how useful Medical would be for epidemiology studies on HIV / AIDS. The strong focus on the family medicine and socioeconomics, together with the use of industry standards (such as ICD-10) and its scalability makes Medical a perfect solution for epidemiology studies with large amount of data.


Version 0.0.33 has just been released, with the appointment manager, a great way of visually displaying the appointments for different doctors, specialties and institutions.

Please checkout the Medical homepage on sourceforge http://medical.sourceforge.net for the latest news.

If you are interested in collaborating in the project for your country or NGO, please drop us a line to medical@thymbra.com

Thanks
Luis

Medical in IST-Africa 2009

25 Wednesday Feb 2009

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Medical keeps growing and that is definitely good news 🙂

I just got back from the north of Argentina, where we are working in the implementation of Medical in a Primary Care Center.

The implementation of Medical in the Primary Care Center will optimize the team work among doctors, administrative workers and health promotion agents. It’s a major project that will translate in a fully operational Hospital Information System. The implementation will not only cover the clinical and socioeconomics data for the patient and families, but all the processes within a hospital (Human Resources, accounting, Supply Chain Management, dashboards, …).

The collected information will be very useful for the health authorities in making effective epidemiological studies and health campaigns, identifying the risk groups in real time and taking proactive measures. There will be a very substantial savings on the medicaments and other goods, since the ordering policies will be automatic.

On this context, I have been invited to participate in IST-Africa 2009 (www.ist-africa.org), that will take place in Kampala, Uganda this May. I am very happy to assist and to be able to talk about the experience of the Medical Project: Implementing an Open Source Hospital Information System (HIS) in rural Argentina.

This project involves a great deal of commitment from a multi-disciplinary team (doctor, nurses, social workers, universities, government health authorities,… ), but I’m convinced that the results are worthed the effort.

I am confident that Medical will translate into a much more efficient way of dealing with public health, and that society will benefit immediately from it.

If you are part of a public health authority, an NGO member and want to contribute or know more about the project, and how could be of help in your region, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

The main project page is at sourceforge : http://medical.sourceforge.net

Thanks
Luis