An Interview with Open Source Health IT Project: LibreHealth

LibreHealth is the largest health IT project to emerge recently, particularly in the area of free and open source software. In this video, Dr. Judy Gichoya of the LibreHealth project explains what clinicians in Africa are dealing with and what their IT needs are.

Both developed and developing countries need better health IT systems to improve patient care. In the developed countries, electronic records and other health IT systems sprout complexities that reflect the health care systems in which they function. But these IT systems are far removed from real-life needs of doctors caring for patients, and have transformed physicians in the US into its largest data entry workforce.

In developing countries, scarcity is the norm, and gains cannot be achieved without innovative approaches to delivering health care. The LibreHealth team hopes to learn from both the failures of proprietary IT systems and the opportunities missed by various open source systems such as OpenMRS and OpenEMR. Dr. Gichoya describes the future of open source health IT systems and the health projects united under LibreHealth. The project seeks to provide transparency and be a patient advocate when developing and deploying health systems.

Learn more in my podcast interview with Dr. Gichoya below:

You can find more information and connect with the community on the LibreHealth forums.

Check out all the Healthcare Scene interviews on the Healthcare Scene YouTube channel.

About the author

Andy Oram

Andy is a writer and editor in the computer field. His editorial projects have ranged from a legal guide covering intellectual property to a graphic novel about teenage hackers. A correspondent for Healthcare IT Today, Andy also writes often on policy issues related to the Internet and on trends affecting technical innovation and its effects on society. Print publications where his work has appeared include The Economist, Communications of the ACM, Copyright World, the Journal of Information Technology & Politics, Vanguardia Dossier, and Internet Law and Business. Conferences where he has presented talks include O'Reilly's Open Source Convention, FISL (Brazil), FOSDEM (Brussels), DebConf, and LibrePlanet. Andy participates in the Association for Computing Machinery's policy organization, named USTPC, and is on the editorial board of the Linux Professional Institute.

   

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