On Thursday, Feb 23rd, 2023, GNU Solidario and the Spanish NGO Fundación La Vicuña ORL have signed a cooperation agreement to promote and implement the Health and Hospital Management component from GNUHealth in those areas and institutions where Fundación La Vicuña has activities, mainly Spain and countries in Africa.
Fundación La Vicuña is a non-profit organization founded 15 years ago by a group of physicians, mostly ear, nose and throat specialists in Cadiz, Spain.
GNU Solidario and Fundacion La Vicuña share the goal of improving the lives of the underprivileged, through Social Medicine and universal access to healthcare. GNU Health will be a very valuable tool to assess the socioeconomic determinants of health and to minimize the impact in the vulnerable population, both in Spain and in the African continent. GNU Health will improve the management of health institutions and the daily medical practice where Fundación La Vicuña has missions. Patient evaluations, medical records, prescriptions, laboratory, surgeries and inpatient/hospitalization will be some of the areas that will benefit from GNU Health HMIS.
Casimiro García, president and founder of Fundación La Vicuña and Luis Falcón, founder and president of GNU Solidario, formalized the cooperation agreement this Thursday. In the coming weeks, GNU Solidario will train the team from Fnd. La Vicuña in the use of GNUHealth, and a development environment will be rolled out.
We are thrilled and looking forward to working hand in hand with Fundación la Vicuña, to put into practice the philosophy of open science and Libre software in healthcare for the betterment of our societies, delivering Social Medicine and dignity to those who need it most.
We start 2023 with exciting news for the medical and scientific community!
GNU Health has been adopted by he Jérôme Lejeune foundation, a leading organization in the research and management of trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome) and other intellectual disabilities of genetic origin.
Lejeune foundation has its headquarters in France, with offices in Argentina, the United States and Spain.
On December 2022, the faculty of engineering from the University of Entre Rios, represented by the dean Diego Campana and the head of the school of Public Health, Fernando Sassetti, formalized the agreement with the president of the Lejeune foundation in Argentina, Luz Morano.
The same month, I met in Madrid with the medical director and IT team of the Lejeune foundation Spain.
Luz Morano declared “[GNU Health] goes beyond the Foundation, providing the health professionals the specific features to manage a patient with trisomy 21. We are putting a project in the hands of humanity“
[GNU Health] goes beyond the Foundation, providing the health professionals the specific features to manage a patient with trisomy 21. We are putting a project in the hands of humanity
Luz Morano, President of Lejeune Foundation, Argentina
Morano also stated: “GNU Health will pave the road for the medical management, and let us focus on our two other missions: Research and the defense of patient rights“
The agreement is in the context of the GNU Health Alliance of Academic and Research Institutions that UNER has with GNU Solidario. In this sense, Fernando Sassetti explained “It provides tools for an integrative approach of those people with certain pathologies that due to the reduced number are not managed in the best way. This will benefit the organizations and health professionals, that today lack the means to do so in the best way and timely manner. It benefits the patients, in their right to have an integral health record.”
Research and Open Science
The adoption of GNUHealth by the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation opens new exciting avenues for the scientific community. In addition to the clinical management and medical history, GNU Health will enable scientists to dive into the fields of genomics, epigenetics and exposomics, gathering and processing information from multiple contexts and subjects, thanks to the distributed nature of the GNU Health Federation.
The GNU Health HMIS counts many packages and features, some of them of special interest for this project. In addition to the specific customizations for the foundation, the packages already present in GNUHealth, such as obstetrics, pediatrics, genomics, socioeconomics or lifestyle will provide a holistic approach to the person with trisomy 21 and other related conditions.
All of this will be done using exclusively Free/Libre software and open science.
People before Patients
Trisomy 21 poses challenges for the individual, their family, health professionals and the society. The scientific community needs to push the research to shed light on the etiology, physiopathology and associated clinical manifestations, such as heart defects, blood disorders or Alzheimer’s.
Most importantly, as part of the scientific community, we must put a stop to the discrimination and stigmatization. We must tear down the barriers and walls built on our societies that prevent the inclusion of individuals with trisomy 21.
As part of this effort, GNU Health provides the WHO International Classification on Functioning, disability and health (ICF). In other words, is not just the health condition or disorder we may have, but how the environmental factors and barriers influence the normal functioning and integration as individuals in the society. Many times, those physical, artificial barriers present in our daily lives are way more pernicious than the condition itself.
The strong focus of GNU Health in Social Medicine, and the way we perceive medicine as a social science will help improving the life of the person living with trisomy 21, and contribute to the much needed healing process in our societies. We need to work on the molecular basis of the health conditions, but little can be done if without empathetic, inclusive and supportive societies so people can live and enjoy life with dignity, no matter their health or socioeconomic status.
Projects like this represent the spirit of GNU Health and make me immensely proud to be part of this community.
Happy and healthy hacking! Luis Falcon, MD President, GNU Solidario
On a day like this, October 12th, 2008, I registered the “Medical” project at SourceForge. Fourteen years later, GNU Health has become the Libre digital health ecosystem used by governments, hospitals, laboratories, research institutions and health professionals around the globe.
I want to sincerely thank all the professionals who believed in the project since early on… from small clinics in the African rain forest, to many public primary care institutions in Argentina, to the largest hospital in India and Asia (AIIMS).
GNU Health, the Libre digital health ecosystem
Institutions such as the University of Entre Rios in Argentina, Leibniz University Hanover, the United Nations Institute for Global Health, the World Health organization and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), Digital Public Goods Alliance, have helped the GNU Health project, by providing training, implementations or valuable resources in areas related to coding standards and medical genetics.
Many thanks to our sponsors, particularly Thymbra and openSUSE who have been supporting GNU Health since day one, sponsoring our annual congress (GNUHealthCon). In addition, openSUSE has donated raspberry pi devices for development and for implementation projects, as well as packaging GNU Health for their distribution. Thank you Fosshost, for all this years of hosting the GNU Health HMIS and the BigBlueButton for our conferences!
Thank you European Open Source Observatory Repository (OSOR) / Joinup and the Free Software Foundation Europe for your work in making GNU Health a reality in Europe, specially in the Public Health sector.
Immense gratitude to the GNU operating system, particularly, to Richard Stallman -father of the Free Software movement- who in 2011 declared GNU Health an official GNU project. Since that day, all the components of the GH ecosystem are hosted in Savannah.
GNU Health is an official GNU Package
The GNU Health ecosystem would not exist today without the Libre Software community. Excellent Libre projects like Tryton, LibreOffice, PostgreSQL, Flask, Python, GNUPG, Apache, and many others make GNU Health a reality. We’re so happy to count with our sister community Orthanc, a great Libre Medical Imaging project that makes the perfect GNU Health partner in hospital settings and diagnostic imaging.
Last but not least: Thank you to the core team and to the community around the world: Developers, testers, translators, artists, documentation team, podcasters and journalists … I can not name you all… but the success of GNU Health belongs to you.
On a day like this, 14 years ago, the revolution for freedom and equity in healthcare began. And this is just starting…. at GNU Solidario, we’ll keep on advancing Social Medicine, and fighting so health remains a non-negotiable human right, no matter where you live. After all, GNU Health is a Social project with a little bit of technology behind.
The GNU Health community keeps growing, and that makes us very proud! This time, the Spanish non-profit organizationCirugía Solidaria has chosen GNU Health as their Hospital and Lab Management system.
Cirugía Solidaria was born in 2000 by a team of surgeons, anesthetists and nurses from “Virgen de la Arrixaca Hospital”, in Murcia, Spain, with the goal to provide medical assistance and to perform surgeries to underprivileged population and those in risk of social exclusion. Currently, Cirugía Solidaria counts with a multi-disciplinary team of health professionals around Spain that just made its 20th anniversary of cooperation.
GNUHealth Hospital Management client for Cirugía Solidaria
Around a month ago I received a message from Dr. Cerezuela, expressing their willingness to be part of the GNU Health community. Their main missions currently are focused, but not limited, to the African continent.
Source: Cirugía Solidaria
After several conferences and meetings, this August 1st 2022, Cirugía Solidaria and GNU Solidario signed an agreement to cooperate in the implementation, training and maintenance of the GNU Health Hospital Management and Lab Information System in those countries and health institutions where Cirugía Solidaria will be present.
Source: Cirugía Solidaria
This is very exciting. We have many projects in different countries from Africa, and working with Cirugía Solidaria will help to generate more local capacity, to cover the needs of those health professionals and their population.
This is not just about surgeries or health informatics. GNU Health will allow Cirugía Solidaria to create sustainable projects. They will have unified clinical and surgical histories, telemedicine; assess the nutritional and educational status of the population, and many other socioeconomic determinants of health and disease.
I want to give our warmest welcome to the team of Cirurgía Solidaria, and we are very much looking forward to cooperating with this great organization, for the betterment our our societies, and for those that need it most.
About GNU Health
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.
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 HealthHospital 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 GNU (www.gnu.org) official package, awarded with the Free Software Foundation award of Social benefit, among others. GNU Health has been adopted by many hospitals, governments and multilateral organizations around the globe.
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.
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.
MeanMicio 
You must be logged in to post a comment.