#52: Open Source Project for Health Centers in the Philippines

I've been involved with HIT (Health Information Technology) in a community clinic setting for the past 10 years using open source.

In my earlier post, I mentioned about my involvement with the ClearHealth Project. This project is more usable in the U.S. health care system.

So what if this project can be used in the Philippines? It could probably work but needs to be customized to reflect the health care landscape in the Philippines.

But then, I just stumble on an existing project called Community Health Information Tracking System or CHITS.

according to the official website,

The Community Health Information Tracking System or CHITS (www.chits.ph) is an extensible, modular, open source information system for rural health units (initially for the Philippines). It collects existing routine health data from vertical programs in the Field Health Service Information System (FHSIS) and integrates them into a unified, comprehensive computerized information system. Through CHITS, community-based health information is made available not only to public health agencies requiring community level information but also to the community itself which generates the information. It enables the community to use this information for local decision-making and health planning. In addition to software, CHITS also includes structured capability-building programs designed to improve the health information systems within local health centers, regardless of the level of automation. CHITS began in Pasay City and is now in 18 health facilities (July 2008) around the country with requests for installation from many more.

This is such an exciting project that can power up Health Centers in the Philippines at a low cost. Checking the system requirements, the program was written in PHP and uses MySql database and Apache web server. A platform that doesn't require expensive hardware. In fact, the project would cost around P20,000.00 per install.

The Philippines has 1,495 towns. If we have a community center per town that will cost about P30M. Quite an amount.

But there's a way to reduce this cost. Each province can establish a data center and install a higher capacity server to be shared by each health center within a province. Let's say a data center average cost is P200,000.00 x 81 (provinces), the cost will just be around P16M.

There may be some other cost not included such as maintenance and program development cost but think about a nationwide Health information system that will improve the delivery of health services in the rural areas. Think about a system that is free from the clouts of proprietary vendors.

Maybe the Provincial government of Abra might want to consider this project...