GNU Health/介绍

关于本书

这本书介绍了 GNU Health、免费健康和医院信息系统。与传统书籍不同的是，这本书将会随着最新的 GNU Health 稳定版本一起更新。健康是会随着时间改变的， GNU Health 也是会随着时间改变的。

版本控制：这本书将包括即将发布的版本的功能，几周后才能发布稳定版。这意味着书中的一些文本和图片属于新版本。

这本书是由下面部分组成：

GNU Health 的介绍
功能指南：项目背后的理念和核心功能。提供有关如何接近 GNU Health 实现的信息。
模块详情：特定模块的信息和指令。每个模块都有专门的功能(小儿科，外科，妇科，社会经济…)
技术：安装手册、管理员的指导

如果您从 GNU Health 开始，您应该以线性、顺序的方式阅读这本书。这是理解软件、项目以及如何实现它的最好方法。

GNU Health 功能

GNU Health的主要领域是：

个人和社区管理：demographics, domiciliary units, families, operational areas and sectors, ...
病人管理：Socioeconomics, lifestyle, encounters / evaluations, hospitalizations, lab reports, clinical history, ...
健康中心管理：Finances, stock, pharmacy , laboratory, beds, operating rooms, appointments, supply chain management, human resources, ...
信息管理：Reporting, Demographics and Epidemiology

These areas involve a multi-disciplinary teams, with different responsibilities. For example, the individual demographics and status of the domiciliary units (DU) can be collected by social workers; the patient management by health professionals ; the health center management by administrative personnel and accountants ; and the Information produced by the health center can be processed and managed by the Ministry of Health authorities.

This is just an example to show the importance of team work in GNU Health to get be best results in your community.

Deploying GNU Health: Centralized vs Distributed Installations

GNU Health is scalable in functionality, database size, and transactional volume. For instance, you can install GNU Health in a single doctor office, or in country public hospitals network. Depending on the type of deployment, you will think about a centralized (single instance) vs a distributed installation.

Single GNU Health Instance: All the information resides in a single database, and it will be accessed via network from different workstations from the same health center (local area network) or from different health centers.
Distributed GNU Health instances: Under this scenario, each health center has its own database instance, and information can be synchronized among health centers. This would be the case when you want to deploy GNU Health in a network of hospitals, where the communication infrastructure is suboptimal.

Needless to say, choosing the deployment method requires careful study of resources (hardware, network, human resources, security and access control, backup and disaster recovery policies, ... ) that goes beyond the scope of this book. The two types of installations have pros and cons.

Unique Patient ID: In hand-written histories and in some electronic medical records, it is not uncommon to find duplicate patients or duplicate medical records. This scenario is not only costly, but it may represent a risk to the patient.

The other problem people face in many countries is data isolation. That is, health centers don't communicate with each other, resulting in a different medical history on each center. In other words, in many health care systems today, you are a different person and patient at each health center you visit.

GNU Health uses a unique person and patient identifier, that does not allow the duplication of either individuals or patient medical history at the health center. It allows exporting the information to the patient card, and it provides the framework to synchronize data between health centers. For quick patient identification in different health care networks, the patient ID can be read, for example, with a QR reader, speeding up the registration process and avoiding common human errors.

If you plan to use a distributed environment in your health network, you can find more information about it in the GNU Health Synchronization Guide.