"Governments should use free software as a way to achieve sustainable state policies in the field of public health", says Luis Falcon, the founder of GNU Health, a free health and hospital information system built on free software. The project aims to make electronic health care systems a public good.

Falcon earlier this month presented the hospital information system at the World Summit on the Information Society, which took place in Geneva, Switzerland, from 13 to 17 May. "GNU Health has at its heart the Alma Ata Declaration", Falcon said, referring to a declaration adopted at a World Health Organisation conference on primary health care in 1978. "We only changed one letter in that declaration. We added an e to 'Health for all', to make it 'eHealth for all'."

For the record
At the conference in Geneva, Falcon demonstrated GNU Health. The system includes an electronic medical record, offers a hospital information system and can be used as a system for epidemiology. It is now available in many languages, including Spanish, English, Russian, German, French and Bahasa.

Falcon works for GNU Solidario, an non-profit organisation set up to help develop and maintain the GNU Health hospital information system. The organisation has offices in Spain and in Argentina.

GNU Health is used around the world. Examples include hospitals in Argentina, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Zambia.

More information:
Blog post by Luis Falcon on GNU Health at the WHO health summit
Presentation by Luis Falcon (pdf)
World Summit on the Information Society Forum 2013
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