Every week hundreds of patients are discharged from London hospitals and for some, a comprehensive package of continuing care provided by health and social care teams within nursing or patients homes is essential.

Homerton Hospital in Hackney – part of Homerton University Hospital Trust - has developed a smart electronic solution that makes the process of completing all the associated paperwork much easier, quicker and cost effective; bringing benefits to the hospital, social care teams, patients and carers alike.

The solution, which incorporates NHSmail, allows staff to complete continuing care paperwork electronically and share it with relevant parties via secure email. Even better, the solution was developed and implemented in a matter of weeks as part of the Discharge team’s regular work, with no extra costs involved.

Cutting down the paper chase

GNU Solidario and UNU are now working together in specific areas, for example, the documentation process. GNU Solidario will also work with UNU in the installation of a demo server.

This is yet another great example of how free software can leverage resources to help  developing countries. Many thanks to Mr Nurhizam Safie Mohd Satar who is leading the MEDICAL integration project at the United Nations University - International Institute for Global Health (IIGH).

This collaborative effort will increase the amount of physicians using free software, and we will all benefit from their valuable feedback.

"I would like to take the opportunity to thank the United Nations and their Development Program - UNDP - ( http://www.undp.org), as it has been supporting our mission since 2009." Mr Raul Zambrano, Senior Policy Advisor on ICT and Governance for the UNDP, a lecturer at IWEEE (http://www.iweee.org) 2010 in Las Palmas.

On December 16th 2010, at the 8th ordinary meeting of the Brazilian Tripartite Commission (CTI), a draft Ministerial Order establishing  the standards  for interoperability to be adopted by health information systems of the various levels of the Brazilian National Health System (SUS) was submitted for agreement. CTI is the Brazilian collegiate body representing the Ministry of Health (MoH), the National Council of State Health Secretaries (CONASS) and the National Council of Municipal Health Secretaries (CONASEMS), i.e. 3 levels of government. The CTI is  responsible  for setting  regulation and operational policies within the SUS. The interoperability framework consists of a set of basic assumptions, operational rules and technical specifications to regulate the exchange of information between public and private, municipal, state and federal health information systems, also establishing conditions of interaction with the other spheres of government and society in general. (Minutes of agreement meeting: http://portal.saude.gov.br/portal/arquivos/pdf/decisoes_cit2010.pdf)

The standards will be publicly available on the DATASUS (SUS's IT department) website (draft statement: http://portal.saude.gov.br/portal/arquivos/pdf/2c_221210.pdf)

They will be updated on a regular basis and will contain a set of meta-data that follow the format already defined by the Brazilian E-government program. Version 1.0, attached to the above resolution, contains two sets of standards, one for web services and one for data structures and semantics, the latter only defined at the logical level (business) and non-physical archival database, so that legacy systems can communicate through nationally agreed XML Schemas. The standards choices are as follows:

The draft was approved  unanimously and agreed by the members of CTI for adoption on a national scale. The draft has been revised and, according to the Coordinator of Information Systems of DATASUS,  Francisco José Marques, it is expected to be approved by the new Minister of Health in the near future.