Spanish software to computerize healthcare in Cameroon and India

Its use allows identifying different nuclei where one disease or another proliferates and preventing, for example, contagions

In several rural Africa, a patient’s medical history is reduced to a piece of paper. If the form is lost, the data is finished. Computerizing health centres would improve patient care and management of the services offered. Incorporate the technology to these inadequate databases. It would help to obtain statistics and detect epidemics or spikes in diseases, in addition to guaranteeing better patient care due to monitoring, evolution, optimization of resources and extraction of statistical data. With this premise, the program developed by GNU Health, the NGO chaired by Luis Falcón. This Spanish computer engineer and doctor has installed free healthcare software as a tool for healthcare staff to improve the living conditions of their communities in countries such as Cameroon, India, Pakistan or Laos.

“Traditional health management systems focus on the disease, which generates reactive and reductionist medicine,” argues the expert. «GNU Health has a multidisciplinary approach, with disease prevention as primary tools. It contains multiple indicators of social determinants of health, at the individual, family and society levels. Nutrition, educational level, family functionality are some of the many variables that we have to take into account if we want to improve the quality of life and health of our society. The latest technology in MRI is of little use to us if we do not end smoking, obesity or gender violence, “he explains.

After overcoming some obstacles with training As the lack of computer knowledge or the poor Internet connection, the next thing is to create a national network between health centres in each of the countries that have adopted the system. The relationship between them and with different academic institutions is critical to obtain global data on this population as well as identify different nuclei where one disease or another proliferates and prevent, for example, infections. “We pursue a state of health and not disease; this is obsolete,” he says.