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Luis Falcon, author of GNU Health, receives the One World One Family Humanitarian award in the field of Healthcare

Luis Falcon receives the One World One Family Humanitarian award in the field of Healthcare from Sri Madhusudan Sai at the World Cultural Festival, Sathya Sai Grama, Muddenahalli, India

Muddenahalli, August 17th 2025

Dr. Luis Falcón, author of GNU Health and founder of GNU Solidario, received the One World One Family Humanitarian award in the field of Healthcare from Sri Madhusudan Sai, founder of One World One Family mission.

Sri Madhusudan Sai delivering the One World One Family Humanitarian Award to Luis Falcón. on the right, Sri B.N. Narasimha Murthy

The award ceremony took place during the World Cultural Festival in Sathya Sai Grama, Muddenahalli, India, this Monday, August 17th.

The award reads:

Citation
ONE WORLD ONE FAMILY
HUMANITARIAN AWARD 2025

in the category of
Healthcare
is hereby conferred on

Dr. Luis Falcón
of Spain
on 17 August 2025 at Sathya Sai Grama, Muddenahalli

A Pioneer in Open Science for Global Healthcare

Dr Luis Falcón is honored for his outstanding contributions to advancing social medicine, ethical research, and healthcare accessibility worldwide. He is the founder of GNU Solidario and creator of GNU Health, a United Nations-adopted, award-winning health information system. His work has transformed hospitals and research institutions across the globe.

Through open-source innovation, compassionate care models, and his advocacy for cruelty-free, human-relevant research, Dr Falcón bridges medicine, technology, and ethics to serve both humanity and the planet. His dedication to integrating genomics, environmental health, and precision medicine continues to inspire efforts toward a more equitable and sustainable future for global health.

His commitment to health equity continues to inspire hope for a future where healthcare is truly ethical, inclusive, and accesible to all.

Sadugru Sri Madhusudan Sai
Founder, One World One Family Mission

At GNU Solidario, we are honored for this award from such a noble Mission as One World One Family, that shares the spirit of delivering universal health and education across the world. In November, the One World One Family mission will inaugurate the largest free hospital in the world, a 600 bed tertiary hospital that will keep on providing universal healthcare, free of charge, for those who need it most, not just in India, but across the globe.

Luis Falcón during his speech at Sathya Sai Grama auditorium

Whether is building hospitals, providing shelter and free education to the underprivileged or writing Free/Libre software to empower health professionals and their patients, we all have a common goal: Freedom and dignity to anyone in this world.

In 2011 – almost fifteen years ago from now – it was Richard Stallman, creator of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation, who gave Luis Falcón the award for Social Benefit for the GNU Health project.

Since then, the GNU Health Hospital Information System has been adopted by countries Ministries of Health, multilateral organizations, laboratories, hospitals, health professionals, academic and research institutions across the world.

We are humbled and full of gratitude, joy and commitment to keep on fighting in advancing Social Medicine. In these times of darkness, the One World One Family mission is a beacon of hope, and we are very proud to be part of it.

The One World One Family Humanitarian in Healthcare awards beside the GNU and FSF award to GNU health for Social benefit

We want to make this award extensive to all the GNU community, and to any of you around the world that writes Free/Libre software for the betterment of the society.

Much love

The GNU Solidario team

GNU Health Hospital Information System 5.0 enters alpha

We are very happy to announce that the upcoming version of GNU Health Hospital Information System has entered feature-complete alpha stage. This upcoming version of GNU Health HIS 5.0 supposes over a year of work and is the largest release in terms of functionality and refactoring.

GNU Health HIS 5.0 is expected to be released by the end of June.

This new release comes after over a year of development to deliver state-of-the-art libre technology and user experience. In a nutshell:

  • Tryton 7.0 LTS support
  • New functionality for patient procedures and medical interventions
  • Improved reporting and analytics
  • Enhanced the Laboratory Information System (GNU LIMS – Occhiolino)
  • New features on patient obstetric history and pregnancy related evaluations
  • Improved ergonomics and views on demographics and patient related information.
  • Improved medical genetics and family history taking. Update to the latest genes, proteins and natural variants datasets from UniProt and HUGO
  • Enhanced socoeconomic and family functionalty assessment
  • Extensively revised Medical Imaging, DICOM worklists and Orthanc packages
  • Reorganize nursing and ambulatory care packages
  • Enhanced patient body composition and anthropometrics
  • Enhanced “Focus on” patient section, including automated settings and mental health
  • New insurance and billing features for medical interventions and insurance plans.
  • Improved patient safety and allergic conditions checks and prescription writing

On the technical side we have worked on:

  • Migration to Python Poetry and pyproject.toml from setuptools
  • Increased modularity and minimize dependencies among packages
  • Simplified installation and administration (Virtual machine images, pip, ansible)
  • Improved stability using virtual environment in the installation
  • Over 30 localization and language teams at Codeberg.

At this point, our focus in on testing, translation, packaging and documentation. In the coming days we’ll migrate our community server so we can all test the upcoming version.

For those of you on GNU Health 4.4, please start thinking on the migration project to GH HIS 5.0. This new version is a major leap that delivers many benefits, so we highly encourage you to upgrade. As always, the migration methods and tools are included.

We’d like to invite you to translate GNU Health at Codeberg weblate translation instance and to report any issues you may find during this period.

Don’t forget to follow us in Mastodon (https://mastodon.social/@gnuhealth) to get the latest on this and other GNU Health news!

Stay tuned and happy hacking!

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:

  • Hospital Management (HMIS)
  • Social Medicine and Public Health
  • 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. GNU Health has been declared a Digital Public Good ,adopted by many hospitals, governments and multilateral organizations around the globe.

Fundación La Vicuña joins GNU Health

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 Africa and Spain

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.

For more information you can visit Fundación la Vicuña homepage (in Spanish): http://www.fundacionlavicuna.org/

Fundación Jérôme Lejeune Argentina adopts GNU Health

Fundación Jérôme Lejeune Argentina adopts GNU Health for the research and management of Trisomy 21 and other intellectual disabilities of genetic origin.

We start 2023 with exciting news for the medical and scientific community!

GNU Health has been adopted by Fundación Jérôme Lejeune, a leading organization in the research and management of trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome) and other intellectual disabilities of genetic origin.

Jérôme 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 director of the Jêrome Lejeune foundation in Argentina, Luz Morano.

The same month, I met in Madrid with the medical director and IT team of Fundación Jérôme Lejeune 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, director of Fundación Jérome Lejeune, 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“

GNU Health counts with specific modules for genomics and bioinformatics

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

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