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

Links:

Leibniz University Hannover joins the GNU Health Alliance of Academic and Research Institutions

GNU Solidario and Leibniz Universität Hannover (LUH) are now partners in GNU Health, the Libre digital health ecosystem.

This agreement makes the German university a member of the GNU Health Alliance of academic and research institutions, to work on the research and development of GNU Health, the award-winning Libre digital health ecosystem.

The partnership was signed on February 2nd, 2022, by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gabriele von Voigt, head of the Computational Health Informatics department at Leibniz Universität Hannover and Dr. Luis Falcón, president of GNU Solidario.

University of Hanover main building. Source: LUH

We are excited and looking forward to cooperate and research in areas such as privacy, distributed health networks, bioinformatics, hospital management or Personal Health Records. Leibniz Universität Hannover has been using the GNU Health Hospital Management System component for quite sometime now internally, in their health informatics department. This agreement will boost even more the adoption of the libre health ecosystem.

Some of the components from the GNU Health digital health ecosystem

Leibniz Universität Hannover is a reference for the adoption of GNU Health in European universities, serving as a model of open science and free/libre software in public academic institutions. Moreover, being part of the GNU Health Alliance of Academic and Research Institutions opens up horizons to collaborate with other universities around the world.

We are positive that this agreement will help promoting the adoption of GNU Health and Libre Software within the healthcare system and biomedical research in Europe.

The logo of Leibniz University is a visual Leibniz quote. It shows the binary number system as first outlined by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in his New Year’s letter of January 1697 to Duke Rudolf August of Wolfenbüttel.

About Leibniz Universität Hannover:

The Leibniz University Hannover, long form in German Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover, is a public research university located in Hanover, Germany. Founded on 2 May 1831, it is one of the largest and oldest science and technology universities in Germany. It has nine faculties which offer 190 full and part degree programs in 38 fields of study.It was named University of Hannover in 1978. In 2006, it was named after Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the 18th century mathematician and philosopher. In 2018, Leibniz University Hannover was adopted as the official English name.

Leibniz University Hannover is a member of TU9, an association of the nine leading Institutes of Technology in Germany. It is also a member of the Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research (CESAER), a non-profit association of leading engineering universities in Europe. The university sponsors the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB), the largest science and technology library in the world

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Hanover

About the GNU Health Alliance

The GNU Health Alliance of Academic and Research Institutions is a GNU Solidario program comprising a global network of academic and research institutions around the world with the mission of provide a sustainable solutions to the current social and biomedical challenges, using GNU Health and Free Software components.