Med-e-Tel in Luxembourg

Thanks to the sponsorship of Advanz of Luxembourg we had a great time at Med-e-Tel 2014.

The major aim of our presence was to promote the use of our open source solutions in developing countries. It was great to see other open source health systems present as well to help promote the concept of open source in hospitals.

There was  stand devoted to open source solutions, which was very well attended all week.

We had a lot of interest all week from all corners of the globe. We presented a paper on an implementation of Care2x in a large tertiary hospital. You can read the full paper here.

The presentation was part of the open source in health care session of the conference, and was very well attended with much interest in the various open source solutions for health care being presented.

I came away from the conference with the belief that we are on the right track with our solutions, and that open source really is the future for ICT in health care.

I have come away with renewed vigour to push forward with Project Mtuha and KwaMoja/Care2x solutions, despite the attempts by some to wreck the projects.

Again, much thanks to Advanz for their sponsorship and support without which our presence at the conference would not have been possible.

Project Mtuha on android.

Am very happy to announce that an android client for Project Mtuha our new open sourced health information system for Africa is being developed. Here is a preview of this client working on android device:

This fantastic app is being developed by Firas Ataya, Firas Tanan, Ammar Aranjy and Mostafa Natafji of the University of Damascus in Syria. We hope to have some very exciting news related to this project very soon.

Stay tuned!!

Banned for trying to help African hospitals improve services

This page is written in response to the lies that +Phil Daintree has written about me, and spread on the internet. Despite years of searching he has been unable to find anything I have written that is untrue, and he has had to resort to vague generalities, faked emails, and badly fabricated screenshots (you can see the joins if you zoom in using any bit mapped image editor). +Phil Daintree  is welcome to make any comments to these pages, as he has done in the past. If I agree with what he says I will amend my writings, if I do not agree I have allowed his comments to stand next to mine so that people can make their own judgements. I have every confidence in the intelligence of readers to make a sensible judgement based on the facts. +Phil Daintree will not allow me the right of reply to any of the lies he has told about me. It seems to me significant that he realises that if people see both sides of the argument they will see through his lies.

Earlier today I politely asked +Phil Daintree if I could mention Project Mtuha on the webERP forum and mailing list. The KwaMoja code is descended from webERP and so there is a great deal of webERP code in Project Mtuha. I asked him if he could come up with a form of words that was acceptable and I would use that  wording. Unfortunately not only did he say no, he has again banned me from helping webERP users on the forums and mailing lists, in order to stop me from mentioning our integrating our open source hospital for Africa.

The exact text of my email to him was :

"Subject: Project Mtuha

 Phil,

I would like to publicise this project on webERP. I realise you will
find a lot of things sensitive about it, so I am asking if you have
any ideas how this can be done to our mutual satisfaction?

Thanks
Tim"

I think it is clear that I was trying to be conciliatory, and at no point did I threaten to publicise the hospital system without the permission of +Phil Daintree  .


It is most disappointing that he should try to punish the webERP user base in this way.

It is also very strange as +Phil Daintree frequently uses the forums and mailing lists to promote his own commercial proprietary projects, while denying me the chance to put forward our open sourced free solution for African hospitals.

I thought we had moved past such silly behaviour when we spoke recently on the phone, but it seems Phil was not telling the truth. This is not the first time he has made such an agreement verbally and then reneged on it a short time later. It seems any agreement with him cannot be trusted!

It is typical of the way that +Phil Daintree works to make vague allegations and then when pressed for details he changes the subject. His tactics are to throw mud around and hope that some of it sticks. He has been proven again and again to be a liar and to be untrustworthy.

Announcing Project Mtuha

I blogged recently about a plan to produce an application based on merging +KwaMoja with Care2x, and I thought it was time to update on progress. Currently the project is called Mtuha.

We have been working on the interface, Registration, Admissions, and Billing modules, but to continue much further with the project we require some form of sponsorship to make it happen. Please let me know if you have any ideas for this.

The interface now looks like this:

The icons along the top left of the toolbar represent different security tokens that the user will have in their login. For information about the security tokens used in KwaMoja see this blog post here. 
 
Holding the mouse over one of these icons brings down a menu containing those options allowed for that security token.

Clicking on any of these options loads up that script in the browser.

We have created a minimal framework that enables forms to be designed, and submitted. Also all forms can be edited, and each element in a form can be made mandatory, and it's visibility can be toggled on and off. This can be used for all forms, and converting the current forms in KwaMoja and Care2x to this framework is very easy.

The registration form contains many elements, a few of which can be seen below, but any of these can be hidden, or added, made mandatory, or optional.

There is a stock type of "Registration Items", and any items set up with this category will appear as options at the bottom of the registration screen:

On completion of the registration, the above appears, and any options that user is entitled to perform are shown on the right. Clicking on print, just prints the patient detail label. Mtuha can be setup to use the bar code, so that when the bar code is scanned by a mobile device (phone etc.) you can be taken to a chosen place in Mtuha for that patient.
There is a new patient search facility, which is the same as used throughout Mtuha when a patient number needs to be found. When you start to type in any of the search fields, the list of possible patients automatically updates. At the far right of each patient details there is a small icon. Clicking that icon will bring up a list of options that the particular user can choose to perform on that patient record.

This particular user can only modify the registration details, or admit the patient. If the user was a cashier then they would see options to bill the patient.

Clicking to admit the patient takes you to the admissions form shown here.


Like the registration form it is fully customisable, and all fields can be made optional/mandatory, or be hidden/shown.


As with the registration form, there is a stock type called Admission. Any items setup with this stock type will appear at the bottom of the admissions form. You can select one or many of these billable items, just as with registration.

If the user then logs in as a cashier, and searches for a patient they are then presented with an option to bill the patient, rather than previously seeing the options to register and admit. Selecting that option brings up this screen, showing any unpaid items for that patient.


Clicking on the button prints a bill for this patient. However it also does a lot more. If any of the items are physical stock items then the required stock movements are processed, together with all related General Ledger transactions. Each cashier has a separate cash account set up for them, and processing this bill will debit that account, and credit the profit and loss account with the sale. At the end of their shift there is a report that should be run by the cashier detailing all the cash they should have received. This report is checked against the physical amount of money the cashier has, and is then passed on to the accounts department.

As I said at the beginning of this article, what we really require now is funding to hire more African developers, and pay for my time.