On September 3, the Capacity Project’s Dykki Settle presented “Open Source for Global Health” as a so-called Hot Topic at the CDC Public Health Informatics Network conference in Atlanta.

Settle highlighted the Project’s iHRIS Suite of Open Source software for human resources for health, and discussed how it can leverage other systems—such as the OpenMRS medical records system and the OpenROSA mHealth framework—to improve health service management and delivery. He explained Open Source licensing and its advantages for low- and middle-income environments, including capacity-building, affordability, adaptability and a global community to support sustainability.

At the conference, WHO announced the OpenHealth program, an initiative to improve the usability of Open Source health information system tools by releasing them on an easy-to-install USB memory stick. The inclusion of the iHRIS Suite on the first version of this toolkit demonstrates the Project’s global leadership in health workforce information.

September 2009