2009 Elgg involved on Research - PESCA: Developing an Open Source Platform to Bring eHealth to Latin America and the Caribbean

By kako
http://www.biostec.org/Abstracts/2009/WorkshopOSEHC_2009_Abstracts.htm
Paper Nr: 6
Title:

PESCA: Developing an Open Source Platform to Bring eHealth to Latin America and the Caribbean

Authors:

Carlos L. Sanchez, David Santo Orcero, Diego L. López, Francisco J. Alcazar, Gonzalo Aranda, Julio Lorca, Maria Jesús Rubia, Miguel Romero-Cuevas, Pedro García-Fortea and Sergio Ruiz

Abstract: Nowadays the society needs to communicate and the technologies are revolutionizing the information systems, especially for the health; where an effective use of the technologies is used to favor the needs of the persons. These technologies can contribute to the development of the local economies. Open source software (OSS) can be an useful strategy to bring information and communication technologies to developing countries. However, specially in Latin America and the Caribbean, there are some barriers in adopting OSS for health: the need for open standards, heterogeneous OSS developed without normalization and metrics, English predominance as top OSS language, lack of initiatives to evaluate existing health OSS and needs for quality control and functional validation. The Open Source Platform for eHealth (PESCA) has been designed as a set of interoperable modules that can solve either: simple problems on health management and communication in primary care or complex problems in healthcare systems, including telehealth communications between heterogeneous institutions.