By Aghata Gerlo
As part of the third edition of CAIS (Argentine Health Information Technology Congress) held at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Jussara Macedo gave a talk on Clinical Terminology in openEHR and the present and future situation of the international organization.
Before her presentation we were able to interview her about the RES-National plan, a project being developed by the Brazilian Government in association with openEHR, which seeks to make health information about the population available electronically throughout the country in a secure manner through the creation of a citizens’ portal. It will also support health professionals and administrators by providing a necessary health service for the whole community.
In this regard, Macedo stated: “Brazil is a country that makes great use of open source technology. It is a government policy. We are now jointly seeking to translate everything into Portuguese so that all Brazilians can use it. The database should be open to all.”
In order to guarantee free and open access to its services the company has international licenses such as Creative Commons. However, it needs to finance itself in some way to continue operating and creating useful tools for the improvement of world healthcare and so is supported by UCL (University College London) and Ocean Informatics, an Australian health information technology company, to meet its costs.
Now the great question that arose at the CAIS is: Could a similar health information technology plan be implemented in Argentina? Jussara thinks this a real possibility. “Two months ago I came to Argentina and I was told that similar work to what I’m doing in Brazil is being continued. But they want to guarantee that it will be stable and that openEHR’s mode of use won’t change in ten years’ time. If the model is successful in Brazil, Argentina can adopt it without spending too much money because all the sophisticated programs will already exist. That’s the key; to reuse what we’ve already built and not start the process all over again.”
