Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open source software for developing world hospitals

hospitalrun.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 119 posts

Re: Open source software for developing world hospitals

#51

Post by witty_username »

dublinclontarf wrote: post #29
Maarten88 wrote: post #19

This is a great initiative, I logged in the beta and tried a few things, which mostly worked, although somewhat slow. Probably a lot of hospital administrators active now :-) What surprised me most is that the UI does not seem to be mobile responsive, and does not work well on smartphones. I would have guessed that in developing countries mobile use would be hugely important?

Are they likely to have smart-phones to use?

Many lower-middle class people have smartphones but not a computer because a smartphone is often much cheaper and also satisfies most of their needs for calling, texting, etc.

Re: Open source software for developing world hospitals

#52

Post by reubano »

Nice project... here are my observations thus far

  - login screen takes several seconds to load
  - not usable on screens/mobile devices
  - seems like every click makes multiple server requests   
    (and loads for up to several seconds)
Also, would like to hear your thoughts on building a new system vs building on top of the many available open source medical systems.

Re: Open source software for developing world hospitals

#53

Post by RobertoG »

baldfat wrote: post #44

Sorry another story about my journey with my son while he battled cancer. Closed Proprietary image formats and systems HURTS patients. We used the local hospital for Chemo and everything else at the Children's Hospital 1.5 hours away for his legs and lungs. I would always have to wait 20-30 minutes to get a DVD of the studies (PET, CT Scan or MRI even ultrasound, but those are worthless) and then bring them to the do…

There is no doubt in my mind that the standardization and openness of formats, especially in medicine, should be mandatory.

Somebody I know, that work in procurement for a big hospital, explained to me how the manufactures of equipment play with this (in software and hardware) in order to capture the market.

It's negligence by our legislators allow this kind of thing (I hope is negligence and not greed).

Sorry for your lost. I can't even imagine how this kind of experience feels.

Re: Open source software for developing world hospitals

#54

Post by jglovier »

reubano wrote: post #52

Nice project... here are my observations thus far - login screen takes several seconds to load - not usable on screens/mobile devices - seems like every click makes multiple server requests (and loads for up to several seconds) Also, would like to hear your thoughts on building a new system vs building on top of the many available open source medical systems.

Responsive work is on the roadmap and coming soon. However, the current intent is for the project to be fully usable on tablets, but not necessarily on phones. The hospital staff in our use cases will all be using the software from either a laptop or tablet.

Re: Open source software for developing world hospitals

#55

Post by jglovier »

Maarten88 wrote: post #19

This is a great initiative, I logged in the beta and tried a few things, which mostly worked, although somewhat slow. Probably a lot of hospital administrators active now :-) What surprised me most is that the UI does not seem to be mobile responsive, and does not work well on smartphones. I would have guessed that in developing countries mobile use would be hugely important?

>What surprised me most is that the UI does not seem to be mobile responsive, and does not work well on smartphones. I would have guessed that in developing countries mobile use would be hugely important?

The UI is still a massive WIP, but I am working on making it fully responsive down to tablet size. Our goal is to accommodate viewports down to tablet because in hospitals where the software will be run (and is already running in a few CURE hospitals) medical and administrative staff will be using it from laptops and tablets.

Viewports lower than 600px are not currently a consideration, however, as we don't currently have a legitimate use case for the software on phones.

Re: Open source software for developing world hospitals

#56

Post by reubano »

jglovier wrote: post #54
reubano wrote: post #52

Nice project... here are my observations thus far - login screen takes several seconds to load - not usable on screens/mobile devices - seems like every click makes multiple server requests (and loads for up to several seconds) Also, would like to hear your thoughts on building a new system vs building on top of the many available open source medical systems.

Responsive work is on the roadmap and coming soon. However, the current intent is for the project to be fully usable on tablets, but not necessarily on phones. The hospital staff in our use cases will all be using the software from either a laptop or tablet.

Understood. I'm on a laptop, and unless the window is full screen the UI isn't great.

Re: Open source software for developing world hospitals

#57

Post by radoslawc »

dorfsmay wrote: post #48
radoslawc wrote: post #11

That reminded me about story my friend told me some time ago. He's IT specialist in hospital, they were having some problems with x-ray machine with server based on windows XP and thin clients as viewing stations. Eventually it was replaced with debian based workstations and haven't look back ever since. After this he told me about interesting case with it, there was patient complaining about middle foot pains, on pr…

I agree that we should be using using open / standard format for data and images, but no general rule can be deducted from the fact that one particular FOSS software was better than a particular proprietary software, and in this particular case it looks like which OS they were running on had nothing to do with the better diagnostic.

To make it shorter I've omitted part about OS, generally there was something about this XP box that it was resetting connections randomly, then restarting if it couldn't reach some number of workstations, workstations were thin clients, so sometimes data was lost etc. Support was blaming networking, networking guys x-ray machine server and so on. Finding Aeskulap viewer was byproduct of using linux on server and workstations.

Re: Open source software for developing world hospitals

#59

Post by gozo »

baldfat wrote: post #44

Sorry another story about my journey with my son while he battled cancer. Closed Proprietary image formats and systems HURTS patients. We used the local hospital for Chemo and everything else at the Children's Hospital 1.5 hours away for his legs and lungs. I would always have to wait 20-30 minutes to get a DVD of the studies (PET, CT Scan or MRI even ultrasound, but those are worthless) and then bring them to the do…

I think it's too easy to blame proprietarism as such. It's a lack of universal sophistication in computer technology that makes designing systems living up to real medical concerns great efforts. When the "manufacturing techniques" of computer software is modernized, and enables more widespread implementation of these types of systems, proprietary formats simple won't be able to compete.

Re: Open source software for developing world hospitals

#60

Post by iends »

dublinclontarf wrote: post #29
Maarten88 wrote: post #19

This is a great initiative, I logged in the beta and tried a few things, which mostly worked, although somewhat slow. Probably a lot of hospital administrators active now :-) What surprised me most is that the UI does not seem to be mobile responsive, and does not work well on smartphones. I would have guessed that in developing countries mobile use would be hugely important?

Are they likely to have smart-phones to use?

I just spent a week in La Gonave, Haiti. Everybody had smart phones...which was particularly impressive because electricity is hard to come by.
Post reply on HN