Yesterday, yet another devastating earthquake hit the southern area of Haiti.
Immediately knowing about the earthquake, we contacted our representative in Haiti, Pierre MichelAugustin, 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.
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.
In the end, technology is just a medium, and GNU Health is a social project that uses really cool Free/Libre technologyand open science, for the betterment of our societies.
Please consider helping GNU Solidario humanitarian campaign in Haiti, by visiting the following link:
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+
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 trackerSocial 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.
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).
GNU Health was at GNULinuxMeeting in Palermo (italy) on May 5-6, 2017. We want to thank Vincenzo Virgilio to invite us and for the great work in the GNU Health Community.
Dr. Luis Falcón talking about the GNU Health Federation
Vincenzo Virgilio and his presentation about “GNU Health prova su strada”
Università di Palermo – Auditorio –
At the event we had the honor to listen to Richard Stallman speach about “Free Software, your Freedom and Medicine”
GNU Health was at the FLOSS Village at Med-e-Tel, 5-7 April. Thank you so very much to Dr. Etienne Saliez, Thomas Karopka and Dr. Tom Kane for being part of the team !
Dr. Etienne Saliez, Thomas Karopka, Dr. Tom Kane
Dr. Tom Kane showing GNU Health running on Raspberrypi
Updating your system with the GNU Health control Center
Installation notes
List of issues related to this patchset
About GNU Health Patchsets
We provide “patchsets” to stable releases. Patchsets allow applying bug fixes and updates on production systems. Always try to keep your production system up-to-date with the latest patches.
Patches and Patchsets maximize uptime for production systems, and keep your system updated, without the need to do a whole installation.
NOTE: Patchsets are applied on previously installed systems only. For new, fresh installations, download and install the whole tarball (ie, gnuhealth-3.0.8.tar.gz)
Updating your system with the GNU Health control Center
Starting GNU Health 3.x series, you can do automatic updates on the GNU Health and Tryton kernel and modules using the GNU Health control center program.
The GNU Health control center works on standard installations (those done following the installation manual on wikibooks). Don’t use it if you use an alternative method or if your distribution does not follow the GNU Health packaging guidelines.
Summary of this patchset
Fix missing view declaration on module health_disability in pypi based installers (eg, SuSE, Debian). This issue does not affect to installations that used the vanilla installation method (gnuhealth-setup install)
Refer to the List of issues related to this patchset for a comprehensive list of fixed bugs.
Installation Notes
You must apply previous patchsets before installing this patchset. If your patchset level is 3.0.7, then just follow the general instructions. You can find the patchsets at GNU Health FTP site (ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/health/)
Updating your system with the GNU Health control Center
Installation notes
List of issues related to this patchset
About GNU Health Patchsets
We provide “patchsets” to stable releases. Patchsets allow applying bug fixes and updates on production systems. Always try to keep your production system up-to-date with the latest patches.
Patches and Patchsets maximize uptime for production systems, and keep your system updated, without the need to do a whole installation.
NOTE: Patchsets are applied on previously installed systems only. For new, fresh installations, download and install the whole tarball (ie, gnuhealth-3.0.7.tar.gz)
Updating your system with the GNU Health control Center
Starting GNU Health 3.x series, you can do automatic updates on the GNU Health and Tryton kernel and modules using the GNU Health control center program.
The GNU Health control center works on standard installations (those done following the installation manual on wikibooks). Don’t use it if you use an alternative method or if your distribution does not follow the GNU Health packaging guidelines.
Summary of this patchset
Fix traceback on patient critical info with non-ascii characters from health conditions in the allergy group
Fix several issues related to the inpatient meal orders.
Refer to the List of issues related to this patchset for a comprehensive list of fixed bugs.
Installation Notes
You must apply previous patchsets before installing this patchset. If your patchset level is 3.0.6, then just follow the general instructions. You can find the patchsets at GNU Health FTP site (ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/health/)
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