Tag Archives: GPL

GNU Health presentation at World Health Organization – WHO

25 Tuesday Mar 2014

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Dear friends

I’m very proud to announce that our GNU Health presentation at WHO Second Global Forum on Medical Devices in Geneva, Switzerland, has been published at the World Health Organization site . Thank you United Nations for inviting me, it has been a fantastic experience and opportunity !
I shared with the audience the importance of Free (Freedom) Software in the Health Care sector, stressing that Health must be a public good and it can not belong to private corporations.
GNU Health is now being installed in many countries around the World, it has over 80 translation teams, and a great community that contributes that keeps growing every day.
GNU Health presentation at World Health Organization - WHO
Special thanks to the government of Jamaica, and to its Ministry of Health, who has adopted GNU Health as their eHealth system for the whole country. This is amazing ! Just some years ago, we, health care professionals and social activists, just dreamed about one day being able to provide equality in health care. Today is becoming a reality !
This April 10th I will be in Luxembourg, at Medetel , talking about the GNU Health implementation in Jamaica.
GNU Health 2.6 is coming soon, with a lot of new functionality, such as HL7 FHIR, improved ergonomics, strong auditing, and much more. We’ll be releasing the RC version soon so you can take a look of what is coming up and be able to test it.
Thanks to the Free Software Foundation for making GNU Health a GNU official package; to Free Operating Systems such as GNU/Linux or FreeBSD; to great frameworks like Tryton; to fantastic programing languages like Python and to the most beautiful and powerful database engine PostgreSQL. They all make GNU Health possible.These are just some examples, from a much larger list, to show that GNU Health is a real community-based project.
Let me take this opportunity to invite you to the upcoming International Workshop on Emerging Economies – IWEEE “Social Medicine” , brought to you by GNU Solidario, that will take place in the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria this May 29-30th.  Join us and share your experience and benefits of Free Software in the Health Sector !
IWEEE 2014 - Social Medicine
Remember that health must be a non-negotiable human right, and that people always come before profit.
Looking forward to seeing you in Las Palmas !

[1] Luis Falcon. GNU Health Interfacing and Interoperability   http://www.who.int/medical_devices/global_forum/2nd-gf_posters/en/index8.html

[2] Poster : http://www.who.int/medical_devices/global_forum/H40.pdf

About GNU Health
GNU Health is a Free Health and Hospital Information System that provides the following functionality: 

  • Health Information System (Demographics, Epidemiology)
  • Hospital Information System
  • Electronic Medical Record

GNU Health won the Best Project of Social Benefit from the Free Software Foundation, among other international awards.


GNU Health is an official GNU Package , and is part of GNU Solidario, an NGO that delivers health with free software. GNU Solidario and the United Nations University, International Institute for Global Health have signed an agreement to implement and to train Health professionals GNU Health around the world.

GNU Health was presented at the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Communication Union (ITU) session “ICT for Improving Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health” at the World Summit on the Information Society – WSIS 2013 Forum in Geneva.

Main site : health.gnu.org

GNU Health Decision Support on Prescription Writing

23 Thursday Feb 2012

Posted by in e-prescription, ehealth, emerging economies, FDA, free software, gnu, GNU Health, GPL, Hospital Information System, pregnancy, prescription, UNU

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In this entry I will briefly talk about how GNU Health can help the professional in making the best decision, and how to minimize mistakes.
I will focus in prescription writing and how we’re incorporating DS (Decision Support) to GNU Health.
GNU Health uses the WHO (World Health Organization) essential list of medicines by default, so you already have a very nice and updated set for your daily practice.
The medicament model incorporates the pregnancy category. In this case, we have opted for the FDA pregnancy categories, but you can configure GNU Health to use another categorization system.
In the next screenshot, you can see a list of medicines, with an specific color, that specifies the pregnancy category. That visual aid quickly differentiate those medicaments to avoid use in pregnancy (all in categories D and – especially category X ), from those that will be generally safe to use (such as those in categories A and B ).
 
Color encoded WHO list of essential medicines by FDA pregnancy category
So, from that very starting point, you have GNU Health assisting you visually to choose the right drug. 
After you have finished the prescription writing process, GNU Health does different checks in relation to the patient you are writing the prescription.
In its simplest form, let’s check the next example. GNU Health checks the patient sex and age, and determines the risks associated to that patient. In this case, the patient belongs to a potential childbearing / fertile group. So, GNU Health will set a verification flag and will remind the health professional to ask the patient basic but very important questions about the patient status, such as :
– Is she pregnant
– Is the patient planning to become pregnant
– In the case of pregnancy, in which trimester is she in
In other words, GNU Health will stop us from making the prescription until we have verified that what we are prescribing is an educated and thoughtful decision, the best possible for our patient.
By the way GNU Health keeps record of the gynecological and obstetric status of the patient, but this might be the first encounter or her medical record might be in another center that has some dark privative software that does not share the information 😉
GNU Health prescription verification process in specific patients
Of course, the ultimate decision will always be on the doctor. This type of Decision support we aim to minimize common pitfalls due to fatigue, inexperience, etcetera that can jeopardize the wellbeing of the patient.

Many thanks to Dr. Christoph Larsen and Andrew Gledhill (NHS) that have helped me in the process.

We will definitely enhance the Decision Support from GNU Health, such as in the clinical context, always keeping simplicity and just as a guiding / aiding tool for the professional.

About GNU Health

GNU Health is a free Health and Hospital Information System that provides the following functionality :

  •     Electronic Medical Record (EMR)
  •     Hospital Information System (HIS)
  •     Health Information System

GNU Health is an official GNU Package , chosen by Richard Stallman, and is part of GNU Solidario. GNU Solidario is a NGO that delivers education and health to emerging economies with free software.

GNU Health is the Hospital Information System chosen by the United Nations International Institute of Global Health.

Main site : health.gnu.org

Governments hosting GNU Health through their portals :

    European Commission (EU) , JoinUp

    Brazil: Portal do Software Público Brasileiro (SPB)

The Academic Hospital Paramaribo chooses Medical

08 Wednesday Dec 2010

Posted by in free software, GPL, HIS, medical, openobject

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The Academic Hospital Paramaribo (AZP) is the largest and most modern hospital in Suriname.

The AZP was founded march 9, 1966 as a central hospital and was changed into the Academic Hospital Paramaribo in 1969 gaining its university status. The current staff consists of about 1700 co-workers. The AZP Hospital has a 470 bed capacity.

On a yearly basis 20.000 patients are hospitalized, while about 176.0000 out-patients visit the hospital.

We greatly appreciate AZP commitment to Medical and support to our organization, GNU Solidario. We are working with AZP to initially provide specific functionality in pediatric care and cardiology. This is a clear example on how large hospitals can collaborate to Free software, where the rest of the world will also benefit.

About Medical

Medical is a free (GPL license), centralized Health and Hospital Information System for OpenERP that provides the following functionality :
  • Electronic Medical Record (EMR)
  • Hospital Information System (HIS)
  • Health Information System
Medical is part of GNU Solidario ( http://gnusolidario.org/en ) . GNU Solidario is a NGO that delivers education and health solutions with free software.


Governments hosting Medical through their portals :

Medical 0.1.2 – Hospitalization (inpatient) management

13 Monday Sep 2010

Posted by in free software, GPL, medical, openobject, solidarity

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In this version of Medical  we have added important hospital functionality like the inpatient admission administration.

The module “medical_inpatient” concentrates the main functionality to :

– Make bed reservations
– Check  availability
– Graphically manage the hospital or health cernet beds in wards and or rooms.

Medical allows to manage bed assignments for different types of admissions (routine, periodic, maternity, emergencies, ..), for the specific hospital department.

calendar for hospital bed and patient management

In this view, it’s easy to look for patient’s locations and status in the hospital. The colors visually differentiate the type of admissions.

We have also improve other sections, like vaccinations. Thanks to Andrew Gledhill (NHS) who proposed the addition of the vaccine lot and expiration date. Actually, the vaccine is integrated to the product, so all the production lot, traceability, and procurement is automated. Special controls for vaccine expiration dates have been put in place now.

Finally, this version includes the translation to Vietnamese (thanks to Phong Nguyen) of all the modules !

You can find a detailed description of changes in the Changelog file (http://medical.sf.net/Changelog)

You can download this latest version from Sourceforge of from the European Community Open Source Observatory (OSOR)

Please report any suggestions or issues you find to our mailining lists or bug tracking system.

About Medical

Medical is a free (GPL license), centralized Health and Hospital Information System for OpenERP that provides the following functionality :

  • Electronic Medical Record (EMR)
  • Hospital Information System (HIS)
  • Health Information System

Medical is part of GNU Solidario ( http://gnusolidario.org/en ) . GNU Solidario is a NGO that delivers education and health solutions with free software.

Main site : http://medical.sf.net

Governments hosting Medical through their portals :

Medical goes Beta !

21 Wednesday Jul 2010

Posted by in GPL, health promotion, medical, openobject

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I am happy to announce the release of the Beta version of Medical, the award-winning  free Health and Hospital Information System.

This beta version represents almost 2 years of work, with a multinational team of scientists, physicians, social workers, biochemists, pharmacists, translators and many others who have contributed their time.

Medical represents a solid alternative to proprietary systems, specially for those living in emerging economies and those helping the underprivileged. It’s a free system put on the hand of health professionals and governments to improve the lives of their citizens.

The Beta version highlights are :

  •  Strong focus in family medicine and Primary Health Care
  •  Major interest in Socio-economics (housing conditions, substance abuse, education…)
  •  Diseases and Medical procedures standards (ICD-10 / ICD-10-PCS)
  •  Patient Genetic and Hereditary risks : Over 4200 genes related to diseases (NCBI / Genecards)
  •  Epidemiological and other statistical reports
  •  Prescription writing
  •  Billing
  •  Perinatal and puerperium
  •  Inpatient / Outpatient management
  •  100% paperless patient examination and history taking
  •  Patient Administration
  •  Appointment management
  •  Doctor Administration
  •  Lab Administration
  •  Vademecum
  •  Drugs and medication
  •  Medical stock and supply chain management
  •  Hospital Financial Administration

Medical and / or  its homepage has been translated to Bahasa, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Portuguese, Polish and Spanish.

We are also working on the new documentation portal, that can be accessed directly from the Medical homepage

You can download and test Medical at sourceforge : http://medical.sf.net

Medical is part of GNU Solidario ( http://gnusolidario.org/en ) . GNU Solidario is a NGO that delivers education and health solutions with free software.

We’ll be presenting Medical in LinuxCon Brazil 2010, this August. You can check the current and next events here

Thanks
Luis Falcón
GNU Solidario

Release of Medical 0.0.50

07 Monday Jun 2010

Posted by in GNU solidario, GPL, medical, openobject

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In this version we keep on improving navigation, demo data and reporting.

Since 0.0.50 the patient’s diseases (including allergies) will be always visible. A new color schema will differentiate and highlight severe and infectious diseases. The diseases are also ordered by different parameters ( active,  disease status, severity, diagnosis date, pregnancy warnings, … ).

This design optimizes navigation and the focus on the different aspects of the patient, without missing critical information about the patient.

Medical is a free Health and Hospital Information System, with the goal to provide a universal high quality e-Health environment, specially for countries and provinces with low resources.

As usual, you can download and test Medical at sourceforge : http://medical.sf.net

Please download it and report any bugs and suggestions !

Medical is part of the GNU Solidario project ( http://gnusolidario.org/en ) . GNU Solidario is a NGO that delivers education and health solutions with free software.