Medical - an Open Object based solution for clinics and hospitals
For the last 2 years I have been actively following an open source project which is now called Open Object. It is a great Rapid Application Development platform (i.e. you can build applications using it very quickly compared to coding from scratch) written in Python. For the most part it is the platform used to customise and implement OpenERP solutions. I have put in a couple of systems using this framework and have another in the pipeline and overall the experience has been very positive - The systems tend to be very inituitive and easy to manage and customise.
I have also been actively working with Health related organisations for the past 6 years so I was very interested when Luis Falcon from Thymbra put together a Health Information System using Open Object. Initially I thought that this was just a brave attempt but it seems that the project managed to get some legs and was announced sourceforge’s project of the month in September 2009 - see here http://sourceforge.net/community/potm-200909/
Basically it is a a multi-user, highly scalable, centralized Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and Hospital Information System. The Objective is to provide a free universal Health and Hospital Information System, so doctors and institutions all over the world, specially in developing countries will benefit from a centralized, high quality, secure and scalable system. It includes a lot of international standards and is starting to take on HL7 for data transfer. Personally I believe that governments, health professionals and donors around Africa should take a serious look at this system in association with improving connectivity at clinics and hospitals.
Of course, there are a number of improvements that could be put in place which would turn this into an even better solution. For example it would take a few weeks work to get a decent HIV Management module together and another few weeks to integrate some degree of pharmacy management. I would also like to see some kind of mobile integration. This could all be achieved with a relatively small amount of funding and I consider this the best value health related ICT opportunity around at the moment.
More about the project and downloads are available here - http://sourceforge.net/projects/medical/