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Re: [Health] [Health-jamaica] Ebola, MERS, Zika, N.N. and GNU Health
From: |
Michele Roofe |
Subject: |
Re: [Health] [Health-jamaica] Ebola, MERS, Zika, N.N. and GNU Health |
Date: |
Tue, 02 Feb 2016 05:23:26 -0500 |
Dear Chris,
Many thanks for raising this with our community.
We must talk later today before you fall asleep.
Around 1 hr from now ... Ok?
Peace!
Michele
+++ + +++
Ministry of Health, Jamaica
Sent from my APPLE iPhone 5S powered by DIGICEL 4G!
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> On 2 Feb 2016, at 12:45 am, Christoph H. Larsen <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Dear All,
>
> Apologies for cross-posting, but unusual circumstances demand unusual actions.
>
> The ongoing outbreak of the Zika virus has been declared an emergency by WHO,
> and this certainly highlights yet another time the importance given to
> disease surveillance as an integral part to health information gathering,
> processing, reporting and related decision-making.
>
> To date, we have a number of hospital health information systems, GNU Health,
> of course, included, that do their job with various strengths and weaknesses.
> GNU Health boasts the existing integration with Tryton as ERP system, which
> is simply great. Plus, is integrated with an evolving LIMS, which is of
> exponentially increasing importance, because surveillance is nothing without
> laboratory confirmation.
>
> There is DHIS2 (http://www.dhis2.org) as USAID-funded and endorsed data
> warehouse for health data aggregation, analysis and presentation at the
> national level, with aim to further informed, evidence-based decision-making.
> DHIS2 has come a long way, but it is still pretty clunky, well, IMHO.
> Modifications may not always be easy to implement, depending on the running
> version.
>
> Back to GNU Health: Given Tryton's scrupulously clean, lean and mean data
> models and structure, there is no reason, why a further push towards business
> intelligence (a.k.a. data aggregation, analysis and presentation, with data
> mining thrown in) should not be possible. This could be achieved as a Tryton
> or GNU Health module, or via linking to external facilities. Solr uses Java,
> Lucene has been ported to Python... As long as this heavy stuff runs at the
> central level (Ministry of Health), this does not matter *that* much, and
> even less, if feedback of the aggregate data and analysis can be done via
> lightweight communication channels back to the field. But it would, of
> course, be nice to keep things in the lean and mean Python family :-D.
>
> Data capture is an issue: GNU Health is not offline-capable, as of now
> (correct me, oif I got that wrong!). And its suitability for mobile phone or
> tablet use is limited, because the interface has mainly been geared towards
> non-mobile technology. I know, there is an app, but I have seen better user
> experiences. Ideally, there is no app at all, all based on offline-capable
> HTML5, and running in a modern browser. http://wq.io (doing all this) might
> help doing exactly that, and could feed into GNU Health as backend, but its
> question types are a bit limited. We need the range of questions present in
> LimeSurvey (http://www.limesurvey.org), which works actually very well in a
> self-contained Android stack consisting of PHP, Nginx and SQLite, with
> exports to a central facility via .csv or .xml, or to STATA or R. But with
> HTML5 e might be able to make this a bit easier. Open Data Kit tries to do
> this by simple .xml exports, but fails miserably on robustness, scalability
> data security and user-friendliness, and is poorly maintained. Plus with one
> toe in the proprietary world...
>
> As for GNU Health, yes, there is a need for body system-specific modules,
> such as an ophthalmic or dental module. Also, diagnostics-specific modules
> might help, such as a facility that can display the peak expiratory flow
> rates in asthma patients over time.
>
> However, I *personally* have my doubts about disease-specific modules, which
> includes the NTD and MDG modules. Recent history has shown that emerging
> diseases move way too fast to keep up. Donor-inspired vertical
> disease-specific interventions (HIV, malaria, TB) have not really
> strengthened primary health care, because they were contained in a silo, and
> GNU Health would do well not replicate this model.
>
> Instead, Tryton's inventory and stock management suite offers already a model
> for a highly flexible alternative: The attributes model offers a unique way
> to capture any specifications of a stock item via a user-configurable
> interface. Something similar could be designed for disease-specific
> surveillance, starting from WHO's integrated disease surveillance catalogue
> to ongoing worries (EVD to newly emerging diseases, such as Zika and others
> to come.
>
> This would allow the creation of a capable, flexible, yet standards-compliant
> surveillance and disease recording facility within hours, offline-capable,
> using HTML5 technologies, or a self-contained stack, and bring GNU Health to
> the community health workers anywhere in the world. Of course, contact
> tracing capabilities will be essential.
>
> Throw in a central unique identifier database (with doing the unique
> identifier being a major legal as logistic hurdle!). and we can push and pull
> medical records across all connected health facilities with considerable ease.
>
> I am fully aware that a lot of the above may sound a bit like a dream, but if
> we put the right tools together, collaborate and keep focused, it can be done.
>
> There have been a few recent and very laudable efforts to effect surveillance
> in one way or the other within the group, and I think this is something which
> deserves applause and further support.\
>
> Did I mention that there is a lot of money out there for surveillance? With
> CDC's new Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), where are very keen targets
> set, yet the tools are sorely lacking. National governments are literally
> creaming for easy to use, ready-to-deploy solutions.
>
> What's your take? From the field end, it's very high time, kind of three to
> twelve, to quote a recent assessment of the World's situation.
>
> Thanks a lot for your critique, comments and ideas, and stay well!
>
> Chris
>
> --
> Dr Christoph H. Larsen
> synaLinQ
> 296/33 Lương Định Của, Ngọc Hội 2, Vĩnh Ngọc
> Nha Trang, Khanh Hoa, Vietnam
> Mobile: +84-98-9607357 (Vietnam)
> +254-770-632403 (Kenya)
> +256-790-527900 (Uganda)
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> Fax: +49-231-292734790
> E-mail: address@hidden
> Skype: christoph.larsen
>
- [Health] Ebola, MERS, Zika, N.N. and GNU Health, Christoph H. Larsen, 2016/02/02
- Re: [Health] Ebola, MERS, Zika, N.N. and GNU Health, Luis Falcon, 2016/02/02
- Re: [Health] [Health-jamaica] Ebola, MERS, Zika, N.N. and GNU Health,
Michele Roofe <=
- Re: [Health] [Health-jamaica] Ebola, MERS, Zika, N.N. and GNU Health, Armand MPASSY-NZOUMBA, 2016/02/02
- Re: [Health] [Health-jamaica] Ebola, MERS, Zika, N.N. and GNU Health, Christoph H. Larsen, 2016/02/03
- Re: [Health] [Health-jamaica] Ebola, MERS, Zika, N.N. and GNU Health, Roberto Novaes, 2016/02/03
- Re: [Health] [Health-jamaica] Ebola, MERS, Zika, N.N. and GNU Health, Cédric Krier, 2016/02/03
- Re: [Health] [Health-jamaica] Ebola, MERS, Zika, N.N. and GNU Health, Christoph H. Larsen, 2016/02/03
- Re: [Health] [Health-jamaica] Ebola, MERS, Zika, N.N. and GNU Health, Luis Falcon, 2016/02/04
- Re: [Health] [Health-jamaica] Ebola, MERS, Zika, N.N. and GNU Health, Christoph H. Larsen, 2016/02/05
- Re: [Health] [Health-jamaica] Ebola, MERS, Zika, N.N. and GNU Health, Luis Falcon, 2016/02/05
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