Free software to aid poor doctors

Excerpts from the article follow:

...The Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, (Vista), was created by the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

The program is used in 170 hospitals and 600 clinics to keep track of thousands of Vietnam vets. The Indian health service and several other medical centres outside the US also use it.

"People looking after the vets can easily call up all the medical records using one program," Mr [Joseph Dal] Molin [director of WorldVista, a USA-based non-profit corporation working on adapting the Vista software for use in developing countries] told BBC News Online.

"It has been used for medication management," he explained, "reducing errors in giving people the wrong drugs by 90%."

The appeal of having a unified computer system that can provide quick and easy access to patient records is obvious.

But for developing countries, the cost of such a system can place a huge drain on already stretched healthcare resources.

Mr Molin said this was one of the main attractions of using an open source program like Vista, as there are no upfront costs for the software or license fees to pay...

Mr Molin admitted that turning Vista into a reliable computer system that could be easily used in different cultures and languages was a challenge...

His group is hoping to foster an international community of doctors and programmers who will work on the software and adapt it to their local needs.

Click here for the full article on the BBC News site.