Big data and Hospital OS improve Thai diet

[JSixpack]

This post is dedicated to TV naysayers and cynics who claim Thais can't do anything.

Big data and Hospital OS improve Thai diet

. . . Dr. Kespechara is a still-practicing MD, a software entrepreneur, an open source pioneer, a force in economic development, a big data processor, a nutritionist, an agriculturist and a retailer. Let me explain.

As a practicing physician in Phuket, he became aware of some of the struggles facing hospitals. At one point the Thai government wanted to modernize all the hospitals and demanded that Information Technology be adopted right away. Then he saw the budget. No significant increase was given to help hospitals meet this expensive demand. After some ruminating he realized most of the costs would be tied up in creating the information infrastructure to capture patient records. He thought it would be a huge help to all of the hospitals if an open source solution was developed so they could all share, and called it Hospital OS.

. . .

Today, Hospital OS is a massive program with international recognition. Major health concerns are now flagged by big data. Farmers are now earning more and the Thai diet is welcoming a tastier, healthier rice.

http://opensource.com/health/13/7/hospital-os

Hospital OS

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hospital OS is implemented in 95 small rural hospitals and 402 health centres serving at least 5 million patients.^[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_OS

[Chicog]

I looked at this a couple of years ago, a good way to go when you're starting from scratch. Commercial Healthcare management systems are so overpriced, probably because of the American model. I'd like to see more government and international support for Open Source projects like this.

But the last paragraph here is the key to continuing success.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)60659-4/fulltext

[froginoz]

I am working in this field for the past 15 years and am an expert in EHR/EMR systems. Unfortunately, while most of OpenSource software are OK, to some extent, on the ERP side of the operations (patient management, lab, claims etc.) they are very naive when it comes to medical health records... I have evaluated PatientOS (HospitalOS is a derivative AFAIK), GNUMed, OpenERP and few others. I have observed that most practitioners do not use these EHR features whenever deployed in facilities (either useless, inadequate or time consuming). There are many roadblocks for EHR deployment including usability, maintenance, privacy, interoperability with other systems, semantic, scalability etc. In this regard, there are at least two schools: HL7 CDA and ISO/CEN 13606. However, these open source software are usable for small clinics. Hospital software are expensive since the investments in terms of developments and expertise are significant. Further, there are requirements for medical device class I or II accreditation depending on the system, this adds to the cost...

But, yes I agree, there are initiatives in Thailand, by Thais, to creatively improve things (I meet quite a few actually). Feel free to PM me if you need more details.