Category Archives: GNU solidario

GNUHealthCon 2020. Social Medicine in a time of pandemic

16 Wednesday Dec 2020

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It was not easy… we’re so used to celebrate the GNU Health Conference (GHCon) and the International Workshop on eHealth in Emerging Economies (IWEEE) in a physical location, that changing to a virtual conference was challenging. At the end of the day, we are about Social Medicine, and social interaction is a key part of it.

The pandemic has changed many things, including the way we interact. So we decided to work on a Big Blue Button instance, and switch to virtual hugs for this year. Surprisingly, it work out very well. We had colleagues from Gabon, Brazil, Japan, Austria, United States, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Chile, Belgium, Jamaica, England, Greece and Switzerland. We didn’t have any serious issues with the connectivity, and all the live presentations went fine. Time zone difference among countries was a bit challenging, specially to our friends from Asia, but they made it!

Social Medicine, health literacy and patient activation

The non-technical talks covered key aspects in Social Medicine, Citizens, health literacy, patient activation and Global digital health records, given by Dr. Richard Fitton, Steve and Oliver, two of his patients. Armand Mpassy talked about the challenges about GNU Health for IT illiterate Case study: Patient workflow at the outpatient service.

Individual privacy and crypto

On privacy and cryptography subjects, we had talks from Isabela Bagueros from Tor, Surviving the surveillance pandemic, Ricardo Morte Ferrer on A proposal for the implementation of a Whistleblower Channel in GNU Health, and Florian Dold on GNU Taler: A payment system by the GNU Project.

openSUSE Leap, packaging GNU Health and Orthanc

On operating systems, Doug Demaio from openSUSE talked about The big Change for openSUSE Leap 15.3, the new features on the upcoming release of this great distribution, bringing sources of SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) closer to the community distribution. I can not stress enough the importance of getting professional support on your GNU Health installations. Health informatics should not be taken lightly, and is key to have a solid implementation of the underlying operating system components, to get the highest levels of of security, availability and performance in GNU Health.

Axel Braun, board member openSUSE and core team member of GNU Health, focused on packaging GNU Health and the openSUSE Open Build Service (OBS). The presentation Hidden Gems – the easy way to GNU Health, put the stress on making GNU Health installation even easier, in a self-contained environment.

Sébastien Jogdone, leader of the Orthanc project, presented Using WebAssembly to render medical images, an open standard that allows to run C/C++ code on a web browser. This is great news since GNU Health integrates with Orthanc PACS server.

Qt and KDE projects in the spotlight

If we think about innovation in computing, we think about Qt and KDE. GNU Health integrates this bleeding edge technology in MyGNUHealth, the GNU Health Personal Health Record for desktop and mobile devices that uses Qt and Kirigami frameworks.

Aleix Pol, president of KDE e.V., presented Delivering Software like KDE, putting emphasis on delivering code that would be valid for many different platforms, specially mobile devices.

Cristián Maureira-Fredes, leader of the Qt for Python project, in his presentation Qt for Python: past, present, and future!, talked about the history and the upcoming developments in the project, such as PySide6, the latest Python package and development environment for Qt6. MyGNUHealth is a PySide application, so we’re very happy to have Cristián and Aleix on the team!

Dimitris Kardarakos, presented a key concept on modern applications, that is convergence, the property of the application to adapt to different platforms and geometries. His talk Desktop/mobile convergent applications with Kirigami explained how this framework KDE framework, that implements the KDE Human Interface Guidelines, helps the developers create convergent, consistent applications from the same codebase. MyGNUHealth is an example of a convergent application, to be used both in the desktop as in a mobile device.

I did go into details on MyGNUHealth design in my talk, MyGNUHealth The GNU Health Personal Health Record (PHR).

Argentina leading Public Health implementations with Libre Software

Many years of methodical and intense hard work in the areas of health informatics and public health have paid off. The team lead by Dr. Fernando Sassetti, head of the Public Health department of the National University of Entre Rios, has become a reference in the world of public health, Libre Software in the public administration, and implementations of GNU Health in many primary care centers and public hospitals in Argentina.

The National Scientific and Technological Promotion Bureau (Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica), chose Dr. Sassetti project based on GNU Health as the system for management of epidemics in municipalities. Health professionals were trained in GNU Health epidemiological surveillance system, as well as the contact tracing functionality.


Ingrid Spessotti and Fiorella de la Lama on their talk Outpatient follow-up and home care of patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19, explained some of the functionality and benefits of these GNU Health packages, for instance:

  • Real-time observatory and epidemiological surveillance
  • Automatic notification of notifiable disease to the National Ministry of Health
  • Reporting on cases and contacts
  • Calls registry, monitoring of signs and symptoms.
  • Risk factors on each individual (eg, chronic diseases, socioeonomic status…)
  • Geolocalization of suspected or confirmed cases
  • Clinical management and followup for both inpatient and outpatient cases.

Carli Scotta and Mario Puntin, presented the Design, development and implementation of a Dentistry module for GNU Health: experience at the Humberto D’Angelo Primary Care Center in Argentina, a package that will be the base for the upcoming dentistry functionality in GNU Health 3.8 series.

The GNU Health Social Medicine Awards 2020

GNU Health is a social project. In every GHCon, we recognize the people and organizations that work to deliver dignity to those who need it most around the world.

Our biggest congratulations to Prof. Angela Davis, Proactiva Open Arms and Diamante Municipality!

As you can see, we still can do great conferences in the context of the pandemic. I hope to see you and hug you in person at GHCon2021.

In the meantime, stay safe!

For this and past editions of GNUHealthCon, you can visit www.gnuhealthcon.org

GNU Health pioneers the adoption of WHO ICD-11 and ICHI standards

11 Friday Dec 2020

Posted by in GNU Health, GNU solidario, HMIS, Public Health

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GNU Health and the World Health Organization

The GNU Health project believes in coding standards, specially in those that can be widely used. In 2011, the United Nations University (UNU) adopted the GNU Health Hospital Management Information System (HMIS) component, in part because of its strong focus in social medicine and environmental health, but also because it complied with most of the World Health Organization standards.

Using WHO standards is key for global health. The GNU Health federation provides timely and accurate health information to citizens and health professionals globally. We are able to generate this large, distributed networks of information thanks to protocols and standards, that permit the aggregation of data from thousands and even millions of nodes.

GNU Health at the United Nations – International Institute for Global Health

GNU Health HMIS provides many WHO standards and UN models, such as:

  • ICD-10, International Classification of Diseases, tenth revision
  • ICD-9, Volume 3, for coding procedures
  • ICF, International Classification of Functioning, Disability & Health
  • ICPM, International Classification of Procedures in Medicine (to be replaced by ICHI)
  • WHO List of Essential Medicines
  • Pediatric growth charts
  • Vaccination schedules
  • MDG / SDG (Millennium Development Goals / Sustainable Development Goals, such as the MDG6 to tackle HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis

Health professionals, institutions and governments around the world can trust GNU Health as the WHO compliant Hospital Management and Health information system.

GNU Health training for WHO Africa Regional Officers

Throughout these years, GNU Health and WHO have been cooperating in areas of Universal Health access, Mother and Child health or campaigns to fight HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis.

It has been nearly a decade of work, at the technical, functional and community level. The training of WHO regional officials, as well as to the health professionals have had a quite positive impact. Proper coding using WHO standards in GNU Health, both for health conditions and procedures / interventions result in good quality, epidemiological reports, better management of the internal resources and improved health promotion and disease prevention campaigns.

First newborn registration in the GNU Health implementation at Cameroon district hospital

Moving forward: ICD-11 and ICHI

The current International Classification of Diseases, tenth revision (ICD10) has been of great help to standardize coding health conditions, but it has its limitations and it definitely needs a review in both the coding system itself as well as the need of specific health areas.

To overcome these limitations, the World Health Organization started ICD-11, the latest revision that includes many more health conditions, the much needed areas of mental health and sexual health, as well as a great method to combine conditions, called cluster coding or postcordination. Cluster coding allows the combination of two terms in for the condition. This concept brings much more flexibility and contextualization.

In terms of health procedures, the International Classification of Health Interventions (ICHI) is estimated to be released by the end of this month. ICHI will replace the International Classification of Procedures in Medicine (ICPM).

The International Classification of Health Interventions will become the standard coding system for reporting and analyzing health procedures. In words from WHO, “the classification provides Member States, service providers, managers, and researchers with a common tool for reporting and analyzing health interventions for statistical, quality and reimbursement purposes.“.

ICHI delivers a coding method based on three axes: Target, Action and Means. It is valid for all context of health (primary care, surgical, dental, nursing, community health). It contains over 7000 interventions that can deliver at an individual or population basis.

GNU Health leads the integration of WHO References

Depending on the individual and environment, a particular pathology can have different clinical representations of the disease. Diabetes mellitus (DM) can be controlled or can have devastating consequences for the individual. Most of the times the socioeconomic determinants play a key role on the epidemiology, clinical outcomes and disease progression, and assessing health as a whole – from the molecular basis to the socioeconomic determinants – is one of the areas where GNU Health excels.

GNU Health provides the WHO International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, that has been key in many context, to assess the impact of the environment in many patients. This was studied in the GNU Health implementation in Laos (see my post “GNU Health: Helping Laos Heal from UXO physical and emotional trauma.“).

WHO diagram on relations among reference classifications

GNU Health is ICD-11 ready, and waiting for you

The upcoming release 3.8 for the GNU Health HMIS component includes de ICD-11 Morbidity and Mortality Statistics (MMS) linearization, as well as the existing ICF package. We are waiting for WHO to release the stable version of ICHI.

The ICD-11 will officially come into effect on 1 January 2022, so we have a year to train and get used to it. The GNU Health HMIS community server can be your perfect training companion. It’s online 24×7 and you can test the new codings in this server.

At this point, you can already start testing the ICD-11 functionality, and how it interacts with the other references as the ICF. Of course, you can become part of the GNU Health team, either as an end-user of as a member of our development and research team, and provide feedback and improvements!

These new additions will be of great help to achieve our common mission towards Universal Health Coverage and Sustainable Development Goals. At the end of the day, GNU Health is a social project that uses really cool Libre technology. I am positive that the immense majority of our health related problems, both at individual and population level, can be solved by means of Social Medicine.

As Dr. Rudolf Virchow said, Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine at a larger scale.

GNU Health and Khadas to deliver Artificial Intelligence in Medicine

30 Wednesday Sep 2020

Posted by in GNU Health, GNU solidario

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It is official: GNU Solidario, the Spanish NGO behind GNU Health (GH) and Khadas Technologies have signed the “GNU Health Alliance of Academic and Research Institutions”, to research and deliver Artificial Intelligence to the world of medicine.

This is very exciting. GNU Health covers genomics, medical genetics, Dx imaging and social medicine, areas where definitely we can use the power of AI for better diagnostics, personalized treatments, decision support, disease prevention and health promotion.

The GNU Health embedded project using Khadas for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine

What is truly revolutionary is that we will be using affordable single board computers, like the Khadas VIM3, where they could work alone or in the context of the GNU Health Federation, doing massive virtual parallel computing.

Citizens, health professionals and institutions don’t have to spend millions to access the latest in technology. In GNU Health, this has always been our philosophy. Health is must be remain a universal human right, and that is what we do in GNU Health. We deliver state-of-the-art technology all over the world with Libre Software. No hidden lines of code, no hidden agenda.

One of Khadas devices, the VIM3 includes a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) that will be the heart of the AI engine.

GNU Health HMIS with genetics package running on a Khadas VIM3 Pro

We can use our GH Federation model which gathers massive information of protein natural variants, and combine it with the latest tools in Artificial Intelligence. We will be giving a giant leap, unveiling the real clinical significance of many mutations that today remain a mystery about how they would affect our health. In GNU Health we are determine to build this critical bridge between the person, the clinician and the researcher.

Another area that we’ll work on is Dx imaging. Training Khadas devices to differentiate many types of lesions will help the pathologist or the surgeon to take real-time decisions in the operating room based on the picture GNU Health camera takes and the diagnostic that the GH embedded return about the specimen.

In the upcoming GNU Health Conference – GHCon2020– , there will be sessions about this project, so we invite anyone to register at the conference, that this year will be online due to the COVID pandemics. Register at GHCon2020

GHCon2020, the annual GNU Health conference

About GNU Solidario: GNU Solidario is a non-for-profit organization that works globally, focused on Social Medicine and health informatics (using Libre Software).

GNU Solidario is the organization behind GNU Health, the award
winning Libre Health and Hospital Information System, deployed in many
health and research institutions around the globe.

About Khadas: Khadas develops superior quality, high performance single board computers for makers, developers, and tinkerers, that come with open source, professional technical support, and a global community for issue discussion & idea sharing.

My trip to Haiti, the land of the free and the brave

12 Friday Apr 2019

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I am coming back from my trip to Haiti.
I was invited by our GNU Health representative in Haiti, Augustin Pierre Michel.

gnuhealth_shirt_haiti

Handmade GNU Health shirt from Haiti

Haiti is a country of  brave men and women who stand strong fighting for their dignity.
A friend of mine from Jamaica told me once to dig into the history of Haiti, and the importance it had  in the freedom of human kind.
I found particularly captivating the  article “Our debt to Haiti”, from Sir Hilary Beckles[1]. A passage from that article:

This is what happened exactly 200 years ago: Jamaica is bursting at the seams with 300,000 enslaved Africans. Haiti is the only true land of the free and the brave, having defeated in battle the enslavers of France, Britain, and Spain before becoming in 1804 the first free state in the western world.

President Jean-Jacques Dessalines, enshrined within the 1805 national constitution, the most humane and politically powerful provision: Any enslaved person of African descent who arrives on the shores of Haiti is automatically freed and a citizen of Haiti.

Quick digression.. After reading this article, I would love Mr. Jean-Jaques Dessalines to reincarnate and to sit down with all the politicians that want to build walls of shame, and give them a lesson of humanity and ethics.
Two hundred years afterwards, over 40 million women, men and children are victims of modern slavery[2]. The modern world has slavery, slave owners and  “human properties” . Just look at what is happening in the Mediterranean and how migrants are abused and raped in Libya concentration camps. Another way of slavering is how children are used in clothing factories in Bangladesh, that make billionaires in Europe. Appalling.
The Freedom passage
Going back to the history of Haiti …
The Freedom passage named the 170 miles that separated those 300,000 slaves from freedom. The distance between Jamaica and Haiti.
Thousands of women, men and children would risk their live to reach freedom. Similiar to those who do it daily trying to cross the Mediterranean sea in Europe or the Rio Grande in America.
GNU Health mission in Haiti
Back to Haiti… I stayed at Hopital Bon Samaritain (HBS) in the city of Limbé, where we shared time with the colleagues at the hospital. The health institution not only serves as the reference hospital in the region, but also, as a orphanage. The work they do in the areas of Social Medicine is amazing.

clinique-tuberculose-bon-samaritain-limbe-haiti

Tuberculosis clinic in Hopital Bon Samaritain (2019 CC BY-SA 4.0 Luis Falcon)

The kids at the HPS orphanage receive education, health and psychological support, as well as food and accommodation throughout the year. It was great sharing time, breakfast, lunch and dinner with them !

htal_bon_samaritain_limbe_haiti

Michel and team from Bon Samaritain Hospital in Limbé, Haiti

like_to_give_lovin_orpahage_hbs_limbe

Drawing by child at HBS orphanage (2019 CC BY-SA 4.0 Luis Falcon)

We also got to visit other health institutions in the area interested in implementing GNU Health.
The world can not turn its back on Haiti
Yes. Today Haiti is a impoverish country with civil unrest, and the world is turning the back on Haiti. Haiti exists and we must cooperate with its brave men and women of to bring back dignity to that beautiful country.

lady-cape-haitien-1

Lady in Cape Haitian . (2019 CC BY-SA 4.0 Luis Falcon)

Since the moment I put a foot in Cape Haitien, I felt the warmth of their people. Their noble smile and their genuine gestures of hospitality from Michel, his mom and the rest of the Haitian colleagues.
Michel is an example of resilience. Not only he is a great computer engineer, but he represents commitment and congruence. He decided to stay in Haiti, and fight for the much needed freedom, prosperity and peace in his country.
I am honored to have Michel Pierre as our GNU Health ambassador in Haiti, and looking forward to many implementations in the country. It has been an experience that I cannot describe with words. You must see for yourself to understand the situation in Haiti.
And yes, I agree with Sir Hilary Beckles, we, the rest of the World are in debt with Haiti. Is now our time to cooperate with our Haitians brothers and sisters, when they need us most.
References / Further reading:

Del software libre a la medicina social: la propuesta de un doctor canario para humanizar la sanidad

10 Wednesday Apr 2019

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Disfruté mucho la entrevista de Natalia Vargas en Canarias Ahora.

Hablamos de la situación de la salud pública en España, del impacto de los determinantes socioeconómicos en la salud de cada individuo y del rol del software libre en salud, entre otros temas.

Niños de una escuela de Camerún

La adopción de GNU Health en muchas instituciones de salud en el mundo nos permite ser optimistas para que la Salud Pública, y la administración pública en general, adopte el Software Libre como forma de empoderamiento y soberanía tecnológica.

Enlace al artículo:

Del software libre a la medicina social: la propuesta de un doctor canario para humanizar la sanidad

https://www.eldiario.es/canariasahora/sociedad/software-medicina-propuesta-canario-humanizar_0_885411773.html

 

AIIMS adopts GNU Health

01 Tuesday May 2018

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A new chapter in Public Health begins. The largest public hospital in Asia, and leading research institution has adopted GNU Health.
Group picture of AIIMS IT personnel and Luis Falcon
It has been a pleasure to meet in person the IT director Dr. Shariff and the rest of the team, that made me feel at home during my visit to the AIIMS in Delhi.
AIIMS is the largest public health institution in India and in all Asia.
During my stay, we had time to visit the facility, the infrastructure and give an initial training to the local team. The GNU Health implementation will be lead by them, and I am very happy to see that. Building local capacity is key for a large project like this.
GNU Health Federation - HMIS node
Thank you All India Institute of Medical Sciences for choosing Freedom and equity in healthcare !
AIIMS-memento-luis_falcon
I will always remember Dr. Shariff email on Febraury 2018. That mail started all. Thank you, and your team, for choosing GNU Health. Thank you for your hospitality in India, for  making me feel at home during my stay, and for all the beautiful presents I will always keep.
aiims_presents_gnu_health
The world needs more Social Medicine, and AIIMS has given another huge step forward in that direction.  We wish AIIMS all the best and, for now, we  give you a warm welcome our international GH Community !

Sanidad del siglo XXI en el Camerún rural

07 Tuesday Nov 2017

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Artículo interesante de El País – Planeta Futuro – que habla de la informatización de centros de salud de Camerún.

En este caso, hablamos del caso del centro de salud de Bikop, liderado por la Doctora Ana Gutierrez y del centro de salud en Kribi, gestionado por Insoláfrica.

gnuhealth_at_bikop

GNU Health es, ante todo,  un proyecto social y me enorgullece ser parte de estos proyectos y poder brindar equidad en salud en el corazón de África.

Artículo fuente:

https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/10/31/planeta_futuro/1509473092_530414.html

GNU Health : www.gnuhealth.org

Twitter : @gnuhealth

Programa Encuentro Gran Canaria Solidaria 2017

04 Wednesday Oct 2017

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Un año más GNU Solidario estará presente en el Encuentro Gran Canaria Solidaria 2017, organizado por la Consejería de Solidaridad Internacional.
Los esperamos el día 19 de octubre en el Parque San Telmo de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, no se lo pierdan !
 

GNU Health en La Universidad de Ciencias Médicas en Matanzas

30 Tuesday May 2017

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Queridos amigos.
Les copio la noticia del blog de GNU Solidario sobre mi participación en el Evento Nacional de Salud, que tuvo lugar en mayo de este año en La Universidad de Ciencias Médicas, Matanzas, Cuba. 
Ha sido un verdadero honor, y estoy encantado de haber participado en una conferencia de altísimo valor humano y científico.
Gracias a todos los amigos cubanos por su hospitalidad y por hacer que Cuba haya sido mi casa por esa semana. Seguro que repito !

GNU Health en Evento Nacional de Salud – Cuba –

Queremos agradecer a la Dirección de Salud Pública de Cuba y UIC por invitar al Dr. Luis Falcon al Evento Nacional de Salud el 25-26 Mayo en la Universidad de Ciencias Médicas en la Matanzas (Cuba).