Tag Archives: GNU Health

GNU Health declared Digital Public Good

04 Monday Apr 2022

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We are very proud to announce that the GNU Health project has been declared a Digital Public Good by the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA). GNU Solidario received the announcement this Sunday, April 3rd 2022.

The Digital Public Goods Alliance is a multi-stakeholder initiative endorsed by the United Nations Secretary-General, working to accelerate the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals in low-and middle-income countries by facilitating the discovery, development, use of, and investment in digital public goods.

Current Digital Public Good Alliance board members (2022) . German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Government of Sierra Leone, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), iSPIRT, United Nations Development Program (UNDP) , and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
Digital Public Good Alliance board members (2022)

Current board members of the DPGA include the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Government of Sierra Leone, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), iSPIRT, United Nations Development Program (UNDP) , and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The goal of the DPGA and its registry is to promote digital public goods in order to create a more equitable world. Being recognized as a DPG increases the visibility, support for, and prominence of open projects that have the potential to tackle global challenges.

GNU Health is now at the Digital Public Goods registry

After its nomination to become a Digital Public Good project, GNU Health had to pass the requirements of the DPGA standards. As the DPGA states :

The Digital Public Goods Standard is a set of specifications and guidelines designed to maximise consensus about whether a digital solution conforms to the definition of a digital public good: open-source software, open data, open AI models, open standards, and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable best practices, do no harm by design and are of high relevance for attainment of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This definition stems from the UN Secretary-General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation.

Digital Public Good Standards

At GNU Solidario and GNU Health we are humbled and very happy with this recognition, and accept it with profound commitment, responsibility and determination. It makes us work even harder to keep on fighting for the advancement of Social Medicine, and to give voice to the voiceless around the world.

About GNU Health

GNU Health is a Libre, community driven project from GNU Solidario, a non-profit humanitarian organization focused on Social Medicine. Our project has been adopted by public and private health institutions and laboratories, multilateral organizations and national public health systems around the world.

The GNU Health project provides the tools for individuals, health professionals, institutions and governments to proactively assess and improve the underlying determinants of health, from the socioeconomic agents to the molecular basis of disease. From primary health care to precision medicine.

The following are the main components that make up the GNU Health ecosystem:

  • Social Medicine and Public Health
  • Hospital Management (HMIS)
  • Laboratory Management (Occhiolino)
  • Personal Health Record (MyGNUHealth)
  • Bioinformatics and Medical Genetics
  • Thalamus and Federated health networks
  • GNU Health embedded on Single Board devices

GNU Health is a Free/Libre, community-driven project from GNU Solidario, that counts with a large and friendly international community. GNU Solidario celebrates GNU Health Con and the International Workshop on e-Health in Emerging Economies (IWEEE) every year, that gathers the GNU Health and social medicine advocates from around the world.

GNU Health is a GNU (www.gnu.org) official package, awarded with the Free Software Foundantion award of Social benefit, among others. GNU Health has been adopted by many hospitals, governments and multilateral organizations around the globe.

See also:

GNU Solidario : https://www.gnusolidario.org

Digital Public Good Alliance: https://digitalpublicgoods.net/

Source : https://my.gnusolidario.org/2022/04/04/gnu-health-declared-digital-public-good/

Leibniz University Hannover joins the GNU Health Alliance of Academic and Research Institutions

03 Thursday Feb 2022

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GNU Solidario and Leibniz Universität Hannover (LUH) are now partners in GNU Health, the Libre digital health ecosystem.

This agreement makes the German university a member of the GNU Health Alliance of academic and research institutions, to work on the research and development of GNU Health, the award-winning Libre digital health ecosystem.

The partnership was signed on February 2nd, 2022, by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gabriele von Voigt, head of the Computational Health Informatics department at Leibniz Universität Hannover and Dr. Luis Falcón, president of GNU Solidario.

University of Hanover main building. Source: LUH

We are excited and looking forward to cooperate and research in areas such as privacy, distributed health networks, bioinformatics, hospital management or Personal Health Records. Leibniz Universität Hannover has been using the GNU Health Hospital Management System component for quite sometime now internally, in their health informatics department. This agreement will boost even more the adoption of the libre health ecosystem.

Some of the components from the GNU Health digital health ecosystem

Leibniz Universität Hannover is a reference for the adoption of GNU Health in European universities, serving as a model of open science and free/libre software in public academic institutions. Moreover, being part of the GNU Health Alliance of Academic and Research Institutions opens up horizons to collaborate with other universities around the world.

We are positive that this agreement will help promoting the adoption of GNU Health and Libre Software within the healthcare system and biomedical research in Europe.

The logo of Leibniz University is a visual Leibniz quote. It shows the binary number system as first outlined by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in his New Year’s letter of January 1697 to Duke Rudolf August of Wolfenbüttel.

About Leibniz Universität Hannover:

The Leibniz University Hannover, long form in German Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover, is a public research university located in Hanover, Germany. Founded on 2 May 1831, it is one of the largest and oldest science and technology universities in Germany. It has nine faculties which offer 190 full and part degree programs in 38 fields of study.It was named University of Hannover in 1978. In 2006, it was named after Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the 18th century mathematician and philosopher. In 2018, Leibniz University Hannover was adopted as the official English name.

Leibniz University Hannover is a member of TU9, an association of the nine leading Institutes of Technology in Germany. It is also a member of the Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research (CESAER), a non-profit association of leading engineering universities in Europe. The university sponsors the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB), the largest science and technology library in the world

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Hanover

About the GNU Health Alliance

The GNU Health Alliance of Academic and Research Institutions is a GNU Solidario program comprising a global network of academic and research institutions around the world with the mission of provide a sustainable solutions to the current social and biomedical challenges, using GNU Health and Free Software components.

News source: GNU Solidario https://my.gnusolidario.org/2022/02/03/leibniz-university-hannover-joins-the-gnu-health-alliance-of-academic-and-research-institutions/

GNU Health emergency response in Haiti

15 Sunday Aug 2021

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Yesterday, yet another devastating earthquake hit the southern area of Haiti.

Immediately knowing about the earthquake, we contacted our representative in Haiti, Pierre Michel Augustin, and started an emergency humanitarian response in coordination with our team in the country .

Haiti suffers from recurrent natural disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes). In the last years, Haiti has also been a victim of structural poverty and civil unrest. Haitians are strong, resilient, noble people. Haiti is the land of the free and the brave (see my post “My trip to Haiti, the land of the Free and the Brave” ), yet it seems like the world has forgotten about Haiti.

GNU Solidario emergency response campaign in Haiti: https://www.gnusolidario.org/haiti.html

Archive picture (credit: UN Photo/Marco Dormino).

We need emergency response now, but we also need to work on Social Medicine, and tackle the socioeconomic determinants that are the root cause of the structural poverty in Haiti. Only then, our Haitians brothers and sisters will be able to recover the dignity that they deserve, and grow in prosperity. We need to create the conditions, working the local community in the country to strengthen the public health and education system. GNU Health is part of this program.

Our local representative, engineer Pierre Michel Augustin, has been working in the localization of GNU Health, and by the end of 2021, we will have the GNU Health node fully operational in Limbé. The Haiti GNU Health office will provide training and support to the local and regional health professionals and institutions.

The GNU Health project focuses on helping health professionals delivering Social Medicine and health informatics.

Natural disasters have a profound impact in the short, medium and long period in any nation. The situation gets much worse when they hit impoverished nations. So, in the short term, we will put all the effort to tackle this emergency and save lives. For the medium and long term, we will continue the GNU Health node in Haiti and building the GNU Health Federation in the country, in cooperation with the local team, academic and health institutions.

Creating local capacity is key to make the project sustainable. Resources will be dedicated to build the infrastructure (hardware, network..), but the main focus and effort will be on building local capacity, and training the local team to make them independent and build a sustainable and ethical model.

Visit https://www.gnusolidario.org/haiti.html to support our mission in Haiti

In the end, technology is just a medium, and GNU Health is a social project that uses really cool Free/Libre technology and open science, for the betterment of our societies.

Please consider helping GNU Solidario humanitarian campaign in Haiti, by visiting the following link:

https://www.gnusolidario.org/haiti.html

About GNU Solidario:

GNU Solidario is a non-profit humanitarian organization focused on Social Medicine. We have missions around the globe, and our projects has been adopted by health institutions, multilateral organizations and national public health systems around the world.

GNU Solidario is the organization behind GNU Health, the award winning Free / Libre digital health ecosystem, that provides a Hospital Management System, a Lab Information System, a Personal Health Record and a distributed, Federated health network.

GNU Health is a GNU official project ( see www.gnu.org), licensed under the GNU General Public License, GPL v3+

Back to the Future

12 Monday Jul 2021

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Leonardo da Vinci said “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication“, but it seems like the “modern” computing world never heard that quote, or ignore it. Today, a single application takes hundreds of megabytes, both of disk and RAM space. Slow, buggy, inefficient systems at every level.

Probably the best example on this cluttering mess comes from the mobile computing. Most phones are bloated with useless software that not only hinders the navigation experience, but pose a threat to your privacy. Yes, all this software is proprietary. Worst of it, you can not even uninstall it.

Fortunately, there is hope. Let me introduce SXMO, the Simple X on Mobile project. As the authors describe it, SXMO is a minimalist environment for Linux smartphones, such as the PinePhone. SXMO embraces simplicity, and simplicity is both elegant and efficient.

MyGNUHealth running on PinePhone and SXMO
Full screen mode of MyGNUHealth on SXMO

SXMO uses a tiling window manager called dwm (Dynamic Window Manager), which allocates the different applications in the most efficient way. The dwm project is available as a single binary file, which source is intended not to exceed 2000 lines of code. That is amazing.

Simplicity is robust, and that again applies to SXMO. All the necessary components expected on a mobile phone (making and receiving calls, browsing the Internet, SMS messaging,..) just work. Moreover, SMXO comes with a scripting system that allow us to write solutions to our needs. For instance, the screenshots you see were taken with a script of 3 lines of code. Just place the little program under your “userscripts” directory, and voilà!, you’re ready to make screenshots from your PinePhone!

Browsing the Internet and the GNU Health homepage

Menu driven navigation in SXMO dwm in the PinePhone

In the end, most of current desktop environments today are huge, bloated and buggy. The discovery of SXMO has been an eyeopener. The perfect companion for my PinePhone.

I’m using SXMO on my PinePhone as a daily driver, and I just love it. Thanks to simple distributions such as Archlinux, Parabola or PostmarketOS, and simple Desktop / window managers as DWM, a am finally enjoying Libre mobile computing.

I feel projects like this take us back to the roots, to the beautiful world of simplicity, yet delivering the latest technology and showing us the path o the future.

References:

SXMO: https://www.sxmo.org

Pine64: https://www.pine64.org/

GNU Health : https://www.gnuhealth.org

PostmarketOS: https://postmarketos.org/

Archlinux: https://www.archlinux.org

Parabola: https://www.parabola.nu/

Featured Image: Leonardo da Vinci, drawing of a flying machine . Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Welcome to MyGNUHealth, the Libre Personal Health Record

24 Thursday Jun 2021

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MyGNUHealth 1.0 us out! The GNU Health Libre Personal Health Record is now ready for prime time!

This is great news. Great news because citizens around the world have now access to a Free/Libre application, focused on privacy, that puts them in control of their health.

Health is personal, so is the health data. It’s been years since I got the idea of expanding the GNU Health ecosystem, not only to the health professionals and institutions, but making it personal, accessible to individuals. Now is a reality!

Throughout these years, the mobile health (mHealth) has been governed by private companies that benefit from your health data. Private companies, private insurances, proprietary operating systems, proprietary health applications. Big business, no privacy.

MyGNUHealth running on KDE Plasma desktop and Arch Linux

GNU and Libre Software

The GNU Health ecosystem exists because of Free software. Thanks to communities such as GNU, we can have fully operational operating systems, desktop environments, databases and programming languages that allow us to use and write free software. GNU Health is one example.

The Libre Software movement fights for the advancement of our societies, by providing universality in computing. In the case of GNU Health, that freedom and equity in computing is applied into the healthcare and social medicine domains. Health is a non-negotiable human right, so it must be health informatics.

What is MyGNUHealth?

MyGNUHealth (MyGH)is a Health Personal Record application focused in privacy, that can be used in desktops and mobile devices.

MyGH embraces the main health domains (bio-psycho-social). All the components in the GNU Health ecosystem combine social medicine and primary care with the latest on bioinformatics and precision medicine. The complex interactions between these health domains play a key role in the state of health and disease of an individual, family and society.

MyGH has the functionality of a health and activity tracker, and that of a health diary / record. It records and tracks the main anthropometric and physiological measures, such as weight, blood pressure, blood sugar level or oxygen saturation. It keeps track of your lifestyle, nutrition, physical activity, and sleep, with numerous charts to visualize the trends.

MyGNUHealth is also a diary, that records all relevant information from the medical and social domain and their context. In the medical domain, you can record your encounters, immunizations, hospitalizations, lab tests,genetic and family history, among others. In the genetic context, MyGH provides a dataset of over 30000 natural variants / SNP from UniProt that are relevant in human. Entering the RefSNP will automatically provide the information about that particular variant and it clinical significance.

The Social domain, contains the key social determinants of health (Social Gradient, Early life development, Stress, Social exclusion, Working conditions, Education, Physical environment, Unemployment, Social Support, Addiction, Food, Transportation, Health services, Family functionality, Family violence, Bullying, War) , most of them from the World Health Organization social determinants of health.

A very important feature of MyGH is that it is GNU Health Federation. That is, if you want to share any of this data with your health professional in real-time, and they will be able to study it.

Lifestyle and activity tracker
Social domain and its contexts, along the book of life
Mood and energy assessment
Medical genetics showing the relevant information on a particular natural variant / SNP

The PinePhone and the revolution in mobile computing

Of course, in a world of mobile phones and mobile computing, we need free/libre mobile applications. The problem I was facing until recently, that prevented me from writing MyGNUHealth, was the fact that there was no libre mobile environment. The mobile computing market has been dominated by Google and Apple, which both deliver proprietary operating systems, Android and iOS respectively.

The irruption of the Pine64 community was the eye-opener and a game changer. A thriving community of talented people, determined to provide freedom in mobile computing. The Pine64 provides, among others, a smartphone (PinePhone), and a smartwatch (PineTime), and I have adopted both.

Starting up MyGNUHealth application in the PinePhone
KDE Plasma mobile applications on the PinePhone

I wrote an article some weeks ago (“Liberating our mobile computing”), where I mentioned why I have changed the Android phone to the PinePhone, and my watch to the PineTime.

Does the PinePhone have the best camera? Can we compare the PinePhone with Apple or Google products? It’s hard to compare a multi-billion dollar corporation with a fresh, community-oriented project. The business model, the technology components and the ethics behind are very different.

So, why making the move? I made the change because we, as a society, need to embrace a technology that is universal and that respects our freedom and privacy. A technology that focuses on the individual and not in the corporation. That moves takes determination and commitment. There is a small price to pay, but freedom and privacy are priceless.

Taking MyGNUHealth and the PinePhone to the outdoors.

As a physician, I need to provide my patients the resources that use state-of-the-art technology, and, at the same time, guarantee the privacy of their sensitive medical information. Libre software and open standards are key in healthcare. When my patients choose free/libre software, they have full control. They also have the possibility to share it with me or with other health professionals, in real-time and with the highest levels of privacy.

We can only manage sensitive health data with technology that respects our privacy. In other words, we can not put our personal information in the hands of corporate interests. Choosing Libre Software and Hardware means much more than just technology. Libre Software means embracing solidarity and cooperation. It means sharing knowledge, code and time with others. It means embracing open science for the advancement of our societies, specially for those that need it most.

MyGNUHealth will be included by default in many operating systems and distributions, so you don’t have to worry about the technical details. Just use your health companion! If your operating system does not have MyGH in their repositories, please ask them to include it.

Governments, institutions, and health professional need affordable technology that respects their citizens freedom. We need you to be part of this eHealth revolution.

Happy and healthy hacking!

About GNUHealth:

MyGNUHealth is part of the GNU Health, the Libre digital health ecosystem. GNU Health is from GNU Solidario, a humanitarian, non-for-profit organization focused on the advancement of Social Medicine. GNU Solidario develops health applications and uses exclusively Free/Libre software. GNU Health is an official GNU project.

Homepage : https://www.gnuhealth.org

Documentation portal : https://www.gnuhealth.org/docs

Liberating our mobile computing

04 Friday Jun 2021

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Last week I got the PineTime, a free/libre smartwatch. In the past months, I’ve been working on MyGNUHealth and porting it to the PinePhone.

Why doing so? Because running free/libre operating systems and having control of the applications on your mobile phones and wearables is the right thing to do.

Yesterday, I told myself: “This is the day to move away from Android and take control over my phone”. And I made the switch. Now I am using a PinePhone on Manjaro running KDE plasma mobile. I have also switched my smartwatch to the PineTime.

The mobile phone and smartwatch were the last pieces of hardware and software to liberate. All my computing is now libre. No proprietary operating systems, no closed-source applications. Not on my laptop, not in my desktop, not on my phone.

Facing and overcoming the social pressure

At the moment I ditched Android, I felt an immense sense of relief and happiness. It took me back 30 years ago, early FreeBSD and GNU/Linux times, being in control of every component of my computer.

We can not put our daily life activities, electronic transactions and data in the hands of the corporations. Android phones shipped today are full of “bloatware” and closed-source applications. We can safely call most of those applications spyware.

The PinePhone is a libre computer, with a phone. All the applications are Libre Software. I have SSH, most of the cool KDE plasma applications I enjoy in the desktop, I can have them now in my pocket. Again, most importantly, I am free.

Of course, freedom comes with a price. The price to face social and corporate pressure. For instance, somebody asked me yesterday how to deal with banking without the app. My answer was, I never used an app for banking. Running a proprietary financial application is shooting at the heart of your privacy. If your bank does not let you do your transactions from any standard web browser, then change your bank. Quick digression… the financial system and the big technological corporations are desperately trying to get rid of good all coins and bills. This is yet another attack on our privacy. Nobody needs to know when, where and what I buy.

A brighter future depends on us

Some people might argue that this technology might not be ready for prime time, yet. I would say that I am ok with it, and the more we join, the more feedback we provide, and the better end result we’ll get.

The Pine64 project is mainly a community-oriented ecosystem. Its hardware, operating system and applications are from the community and for the community. I am developing MyGNUHealth Personal Health Record to be run on KDE Plasma, both for desktop and for the PinePhone and other Libre mobile devices. It is my commitment with freedom, privacy and universal healthcare to deliver health informatics in Libre, privacy focused platforms that anyone can adopt.

MyGNUHealth Personal Health Record running on the Desktop and on the PinePhone. The PineTime smartwatch as the next companion for MyGNUHealth. All these components are privacy focused, Free/Libre Software and hardware.

It depends on you to be prisoner of the corporation and massive surveillance systems, or to be in full control of your programming, health information and life. It takes commitment to achieve it… some components might be too bleeding edge or the camera might not have the highest resolutions and you won’t have the Whatsapp “app” (removing that application would actually be a blessing). It’s a very small price to pay for freedom and privacy. It’s a very small price to pay for the advancement of our society.

InfiniTime firmware upgrade using Siglo.

It’s been many years since I’ve been in the look out for a truly libre phone. After many projects that succumbed, the PinePhone is the first one that has gained momentum. Please support the PinePhone project. Support KDE plasma mobile. Support Arch, Manjaro, openSUSE, FreeBSD or your favorite Libre operating system. Support those who make Libre convergent applications that can be run on mobile devices, like Kirigami. Support InfiniTime and any free/libre firmware for smartwatches, as well as their companions as Siglo or Amazfish.

The future of Libre mobile computing is now, more than ever, in your hands.

Happy and healthy hacking.

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

11 Friday Dec 2020

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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

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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.

GNU Health: Helping Laos Heal from UXO physical and emotional trauma.

25 Saturday Jul 2020

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Luis Falcon with the Lao CMR staff in charge at the 2 year anniversary of the implementation
GNU Health implementation anniversary at Laos Center of Medical Rehabilitation

Laos is one of the most heavily bombed countries in the world. During the period from 1964-1973, over 2 million tons of bombs were dropped by B-52 aircrafts across the 2/3 of the country during the “Secret War”. This nine-year period bombing caused thousands of deaths and a unprecedented human displacement that exceeded a hundred thousand civilians from the poorest areas of the country.

The tragic legacy of that period remains today. Thirty percent (30%) of those bombs remains active (Unexploded Ordnances – UXOs – ), causing over 300 victims every year until 2008, and now down to 50 / year. Nearly 60% of the UXOs accidents result in death, and 40% of the victims are children[1].

If the explosion does not kill the person, it causes severe traumatic injuries resulting in the amputation of limbs in many of the victims. Physical and emotional trauma that takes many years to heal. In addition, many UXO victims suffer from Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a serious condition that can be devastating for the victim and their families[2].

But there is hope. The wonderful people from Laos are resilient, and they are willing to cope and move forward. I have been in Laos several times in the last few years, in the context of GNU Health implementations both in Mahosot Hospital and the Center for Medical Rehabilitation – CMR – .

The Center for Medical Rehabilitation (CMR), located in Vientiane, is a specialized institution that helps people with disabilities and victims survivors of UXOs. The CMR, formerly known as the National Rehabilitation Center initially provided prosthetic limbs for victims of war. Today they have extended the services to provide services to children with disabilities across the country. Some of the services include medical and community based rehabilitation, special education for the deaf and the blind and vocational school for people with disabilities.

At the moment I had the meeting with the hospital directors, I knew that we had to focus both in short term surgery as well as in the long term psychological, physiotherapy and occupational therapy that would allow the person to be fully functional in the society. Again, I was facing a project in need of Social Medicine.

We trained a local multidisciplinary team of nurses, doctors, physiotherapists, social workers, computer scientists, psychologists, administrative personnel, pharmacists and accountants.

CMR nurses. The heart of the institution

It was during that period that I created the package “functioning and disability“.

General patient information and Functioning & Disability tab. Red boxes on these two sections denote UXO related information

Some of the GNU Health functional modules that CMR decided to use included surgery, socio-economics, ICD-10, nursing, physical therapy, stock, accounting, lifestyle, reporting, health services and diagnostic imaging, among others. In addition to those, we included the “functioning and disability” package.

The GNU Health “Functioning and Disability” package integrates the ideas of WHO Health Organization International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health. This functionality complements the ICD-10 classification of diseases, with the concept of functionality. For example, after a person has been diagnosed with diabetes, we must go beyond the biology and molecular bases of the disease, and evaluate how diabetes impacts of on her daily activities and integration in the society and environment.

GNU Health contextualizes the health condition in the particular individual, key for personalized medicine. In the UXOs example, the related ICD10 codes are visible from the main chart:

  • S88 : Traumatic amputation of lower limb
  • F43.1: Post-traumatic stress disorder

This diagnostic information is relevant and key for epidemiology and statistics, but if we want to practice medicine, we must take into account the social aspect of these conditions, and how they affect the person in her particular environment.

The GNU Health Functioning and disability assessment has two sections. The first section is a summary of impairments related to the Cognitive, Visual, Hearing, Speech, Hand, Mobility and Activities and Participation .

The second section is a detailed assessment of Body functions, Body structures, Activities and Participation and Environmental factors and barriers. Each of these groups has its own set of qualifiers and components that will provide the health professionals where to put the focus to the time and the context of that person, as well as to evaluate the progression of the conditions.

We can now study, with a multi-disciplinary team, how the body structure and body functioning impairments relate to the person capacities and engagements in social activities; daily household tasks; using the current public transportation system or the level of access to Labor and employment services.

This is my concept of medicine, the assessment of the bio, psycho, social determinants of health and disease. Medicine is, first and foremost, a social science, and GNU Health is first and foremost, a social project.

Example of GNU Health person functioning and disability assessment

Celebrating the success of cooperation: During a two-year period of using GNU Health, they have provided over 67,000 medical services, automated their finances, prescriptions, stock management, medical appointments and evaluations, diagnostic imaging, and the demographics tracking for the thousands of patients they assist.

CMR Cope team helping people in Lao rural areas

Local capacity building: CMR trained its own local group of professionals who customize and maintain GNU Health, in their own Lao language. This creates a local and ethical business model, very important for the long-term sustainability of the project.

A well-deserved award. The work that CMR has been doing in Laos for the rehabilitation of their people has been magnificent. Their multidisciplinary approach to trauma, from the acute care and surgery, to the physical therapy and the work in the field is an example for many of us. CMR has helped thousands of people every year healing from the UXO physical and emotional scars, moving forward and being able to get re-inserted in society, and we are so proud to have been part of it.

A delegation of the Laos Ministry of Health presented at GNU Health Con 2016 the implementation in the Lao Center for Medical Rehabilitation – CMR – and in Mahosot hospital. We are so proud that they are part of the GNU Health community.

CMR received the GNU Health Social Medicine Award in 2016 for best Institution.

  1. – Somnuk Vorasarn, Chansaly Phommavong, Khonephet Sely. GNU Health in Mahosot Hospital – GNU Health Con 2016
  2. A cross-sectional community study of post-traumatic stress disorder and social support in Lao People’s Democratic Republic

GNU Health in Tanzania. An implementation case.

26 Tuesday May 2020

Posted by in GNU Health

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The following note comes from Mike and Ulf, two Swedish colleagues that implemented GNU Health in Tanzania. The specific institution is Nkinga Hospital. Mike and Ulf have been part of the GH commuity for years. I met personally Mike at the GNUHealthCon 2019 in Brussels. Their work is phenomenal.

The title of his document was “How to Implement GNU Health in Tanzania in 10 days”. We’re very thankful to them for sharing this very inspiring story, and hope is a lesson to all of us!

Background

It all started with that we had studied free software and networks at universities in our spare time for a few years. When we had finished the studies we decided to do something with the knowledge we got. We got in contact with Nkinga hospital in Tanzania and we decided to help them to build the IT-infrastructure.
In September 2011, we went to Tanzania to build a computer network to be able and communicate internal and share documents in the hospital. We set up Wi-Fi points, installed servers and educated technicians.
In August 2014, we traveled to Nkinga to extend the network and set up a PACS server and computers for reviewing x-ray pictures.

Goal
Our goal with this project was to implement GNU Health at the hospital in short time.
The system consists of one server, one spare server, a backup server and about 30 workstations spread out at the hospital. The project also included training of the hospital’s users and to educate technicians to manage the system and network with our remote support.

Challenges
undefinedWe planned to introduce the system in 10 days and expected to start using some basic modules. When the basic modules worked, the plan was to continue implementing more modules . In order to manage to deploy the system at Nkinga in the short time, a medicine manager and an economist from the hospital visited us in Östersund for two weeks to prepare the implementation.


Implementation
When the two personnel went back to the hospital they arranged training sessions for different personnel groups and was a cornerstone for the implementation of the project.
During the first day of using GNU Health, it was discovered where it did not work as it should. For example, it became a bottleneck in the front desk where patients ensign themselves. In the first three days, in parallel with GNU Health, the hospital used paper. In the evening, the data on paper were
fed into the system.
Over the next few days, we moved around the hospital and instructed staff how to use the system. Not everyone was used to computer so it took some time. Everyone in the hospital has been very helpful and we worked up to 16 hours every day.

Afterword
In the first few days after we got home, the hospital contacted us daily about issues that arose and together we solved them. For every week that passed, the problems decreased. After 4 weeks of running GNU Health everything run smoothly. We have weekly telephone meeting to discuss
various issues. At the hospital they have worked very intensively with the training of staff and to optimize the flow. The understanding of the benefits of the hospital system is increasing all the time. The preparation of implementing GNU Health took us approximate one year.

Summary
Examples of work done during ten days:

  • Expanded computer network
  • Installed 25 new computers
  • Assembled and installed 3 servers
  • Training of users
  • Training of Technicians
  • Installed a number of routers and switches
  • During 10 days we (seven people) worked at total 820 hours .

For the implementation of GNU Health, we have purchased hardware for about 8000 EUR sponsored by an aid organization. We shipped 25 used computers and network equipment that we received from different companies.
After 2 months of using GNU Health, 2083 patients was enrolled in the system, 1873 appointments performed, 80 users worked in the system, 1600 invoices print, etc.

GNU Health has been running since November 2017 with only minor disturbance.

Pictures from Mike & Ulf blog (https://nkingahospital2017.wordpress.com/)