Richard Stallman and Medical at IWEEE 2010

We are very happy to have Richard Stallman at IWEEE 2010, the International Workshop on e-Health in Emerging Economies.


Richard will be at the same event where we will presenting Medical, the Universal Hospital and Health Information System. IWEEE brings together the main stakeholders (NGOs, Church, Academy, Multilateral organizations, Government and Industry ) to discuss the situation in developing countries and come to possible solutions. We will be promoting free software (like Medical ) to make a change in the lives of the people, doctors and institutions in emerging economies.


No doubt that Richard Stallman is one of the most important and influential people in the history of Free Software. He has developed tools that we've been using for decades, such as the excellent GCC ( GNU Compiler Collection , at the beginning, the GNU C Compiler).

But Richard Stallman is way more than that. He created the GNU Operating System, that together with the Linux kernel is in all GNU/Linux variants ; he created the GPL license, and most importantly, he has been figthing for decades for free software, making it a reality today, when not that long ago it was utopia.

There is no doubt on my mind that Richard Stallman will be a key player to help us who are working to introduce the free software philosophy  to the healthcare industry. Health MUST be universal, and so should be the software that takes care of the patients. Free software in healthcare is a right that every doctor, hospital and patient should have access.

We are looking forward to sharing with Richard his experiences, views and opinions on how to keep introducing Free Software in the healthcare and schools in the developing world.

More info at : http://www.iweee.org

Luis Falcón
GNU Solidario Project

Peerless Hospital in Nigeria chooses Medical

Dear all

We are very happy to announce that Peerless Hospital in Nigeria has chosen Medical for their institution.

I have been contacted by Mr. Agu Chibueze who told me their decision of using Medical to implement their Hospital Information System, as part of the African Health Network.

This non-profit effort is part of the GNU Solidario project, who delivers education and hea lth to emerging economies with free software.

This is part of the team in Nigeria:

• Agu Chibueze (Computer Scientist)
• Emmanuel Akpo (Medical Doctor, Surgeon)
• Chibuike Ugwuoke (Computer Professional)

This is a very challenging project in which we will put all our effort to deliver a system that will optimize their healthcare. We already set up a development server and are working on a daily basis with the Nigerian team.

Many thanks to Agu, Dr. Emmanuel, Chibuike and the Peerless Hospital for their great mission on helping out the people of Nigeria, and for trusting Medical and GNU Solidario.

Here is a letter from Agu Chibueze about the African Health Network that I want to share with you :

THE AFRICAN HEALTH NETWORK

The African Health Network is a new organization with the primary aim of centralizing Electronic Medical Records within Sub-Saharan Africa. The African Health Network plans to achieve this using strictly open source tools. AHN has chosen OpenERP from Tiny and Axelor as their framework of choice and the medical module from Thymbra.

Currently, online healthcare is far beyond the reach of the common African. While the project is expected to be self-financing, AHN has chosen open standards to bring affordable online healthcare to even the poorest of people within the region. The African Health Network hopes to start its operations by the middle of this month. There are three people central to this project, a doctor and two computer professionals. AHN will be starting out with Peerless Hospital and Wellness in Warri, Delta State, Nigeria as the first member hospital and the Global Medical Missions as the first member health organization.

The AHN project is the first of its kind within the region and is bound to face challenges ranging from poor internet connectivity within the region to a low level of computer literacy amongst health professionals. AHN, however has been working out collaborative relationships between Internet service providers and is planning for an effective computer training program for future members of the online network.

CIE-10 for Medical

For the spanish speaking friends, we have the CIE-10 (spanish version of ICD-10) available since version 0.0.41 of Medical !
So, at this time, users can choose not only the login language (English, French, German, Spanish, Indonesian .. ) but also the whole WHO / OMS disease list and categories in other languages.

We will be talking about medical at the eHealth 2009 conference, ( http://www.electronic-health.org) this week (Istambul, Turkey, September 23-25th )

Versión CIE-10 en castellano


You can get the latest information from Medical at :

http://medical.sf.net

Remember that Medical is part of the GNU solidario Project, a non-profit effort to deliver education and health to the most needed.

Regards
Luis Falcon

Medical : Sourceforge Project of the Month

Hello there !

Medical, the universal Health and Hospital Information System, has been chosen as Sourceforge's project of the month.

We are very happy to see the momentum that Medical has gained in this year of life. It's very interesting and indeed very rewarding.

We'll be showing the project during September 23rd - 25th in Istambul, Turkey (www.electronic-health.org) and during Octuber 22nd-24th in Foz de Iguazu, Brazil (www.latinoware.org), so I'll be more than happy to talk to you in person.

Thanks you to all of you who contribute to the project. If you want to participate in the project ( interfaces, documentation, translations, ... ) will be more than happy to count with your support.

Remember that Medical is part of the GNU solidario project, a non-profit effort to provide Health and Education to emerging economies.

You can check the whole article at :
http://sourceforge.net/community/potm-200909/


Please let me know any comments or suggestions at medical@thymbra.com

Project homepage : http://medical.sourceforge.net

Thanks
Luis Falcón

Medical 0.0.35 and GNU solidario

Hi there !

I just published medical 0.0.35 in sourceforge. It has many changes and improvements.

- Redesign on the disease note and history forms
- New section on Genetic risks and prevention of vertical transmissions.
- New section on Perinatal and puerperium

You are urged to switch to this version. If you haven't upgraded to OpenERP 5.0.2, do so before installing Medical, because it's __way__ faster than the previous version.

You can download it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/medical/

Please check it out and test it as much as you can. Then file all the bugs and feedback on sourceforge.

Medical is part of the GNU solidario project (www.gnusolidario.org). GNU solidario - previously called Linux Solidario - is a non-profit project with the goal of improving the quality of life of the people in developing countries with free software.

If you want to contribute to the project with ideas, coming up with a nice gnu logo that represent the project, etc..., please let us know !

Thanks
Luis

Medical 0.0.34 . It's all about standards

Medical: The Universal Health and Hospital Information System

Hello there

Medical version 0.0.34 has just been released !

The most important feature of this version is the addition of ICD-10-PCS.
The International Classification of Diseases tenth revision Procedure Coding System (ICD-10-PCS) will complement the already implemented ICD-10 coding for pathologies. This duple provides a very efficient way of coding for doctors and administrative personnel, making the data interchange between organizations very easy and with a common language, around the world.


In this version of Medical we have the 2009 ICD-10-PCS version, which contains 72589 medical procedures, from surgery to substance administration and monitoring. ICD-10-PCS is the replacement for ICD-9-CM.




In this way, Medical is pioneer by having already the two standard for diagnosis (ICD-10) and procedures (ICD-10-PCS) that are to be adopted by most institutions in the coming years.

This version also has major improvements in dealing with the queries of large tables, modifications on the surgery and patient evaluation and some bug fixes. Check the Changelog for all the modifications.

Check the wiki for the installation instructions at http://medical.wiki.sourceforge.net/

Please file bugs and comments at the sourceforge portal (http://medical.sf.net).

Thanks
Luis Falcon

PS: This version is considerably bigger than the previous ones, so give some time to the database import process :)

Thoughts about H1N1, cytokine storm and public health decisions

Since the first fatalities related to H1N1 that affected young, healthy people, the cytokine storm theory was raised. And it makes sense. In many cases, after a couple of days, patients would develop severe pneumonia and die in a very short period of time.

The cytokine storm is a over-reaction of the immune system when trying to attack the invader ( in this case, the influenza virus ). The hiper-cytokinemia triggers a positive feedback vicious cycle, releasing a huge amount of pro-inflammatory messengers (Tumor Necrosis Factor - TNF -, and other Interleukins ).

These messengers signal leukocytes ( T-cells, neutrophils... ) to go to the site of infection. Since there is a over-reaction, the white cells action produce damage in the area of action. In the case of the H1N1, in the lung parenchyma.

Now, with several months that H1N1 is among us, and with the experience of the H5N1 (avian flu), in which cytokine storm was the cause of most deaths, my questions are :

- Do we have conclusive evidence (histo-pathological, serum TNF levels, ... ) that confirm a cytokine storm in some of the H1N1 patients ?

- Antivirals : They work by inhibiting the virus replication process, so they don't boost an immune reaction (which is good in this case).

Why don't give antivirals as a prophylactic measure ? This would minimize the initial immune reaction, and thus, prevent or minimize the possibility of the cytokine storm.

We also know that antivirals work best within the first 24 / 48 hours of symptoms. The idea is to avoid pneumonia in the first place. Medicine is about promotion and prevention, so we should avoid at all costs H1N1 complications. What I see is that in many cases, they wait until there is a serious condition related to the flu to start medicating. It just seems too bad-to-late to me...

- Government Improvisations : I feel like there is a lot of improvisation on the way that certain governments are dealing with this issue. In my personal experience, a couple of days ago my daughter got sick, with fever, sore throat and was negative to the strep test (was viral). When I knew that she was negative for strep, I asked for the antivirals and it was denied, since she was not part of the "risk group". This of course is not to blame the doctor, but the health officials.

I'm saying this because the same health officials were giving antivirals to everyone that had flu symptoms and, as a prophylactic measure, to their relatives. That was, in my opinion, the right way to go. Unfortunately, that decision lasted only for two days.

So, I had to spend these last two days in a paranoid state checking on my daughter evolution and hoping that it won't spread to his younger brother.

Why do I have the feeling that high government officials and their kids have the antiviral sitting close to them "just in case"... Anyways... better leave it here...

It would be great if any of you want to make comments or have extra information and shed some light on this subject.

Thanks
Luis Falcon