Sahana HMS for Haiti
People think we have done something new: the Sahana Hospital Status Assessment and Request Management System aka HMS. Actually looks like a useful thing:
…I am on the ground in Port-au-Prince helping with the relief efforts. I met a physician at the UN who shared with me that a huge problem hospitals are having is coordinating transfers of patients. One hospital will not necessarily know the capabilities of another hospital, or how to contact the hospital, or—even more importantly—how many beds that hospital has available.
I mentioned that the Sahana hospital info system seems to be a great solution….
However, it is not new: the magic engine was already there. Build in months, created in painful detail work and nightlong discussions of just us two. The small rest now has been nothing but new labels for the same thing.
Though – we were not through yet and not at all prepared for deployment for Haiti. Honestly – the new engine was not ready to race yet, S3XRC is only half the way. Or maybe two-third, but however a stub. We could have completed that already, if we wouldn’t have to do that all in our spare time of which both of us don’t have enough. But funding ain’t.
However, now they grab at it as if it could extinguish fire – the Sahana people run around with flashing warning lights on their heads as if they could save lives with mouse clicks. But actually it is rather about helping Sahana to survive – while the people in Haiti are still suffering.
Please note: that was not my intention! I was creating that out of what we discussed in Kobe and Himeji – to help the health professionals – especially my colleagues – to do their really vital work. All else is just the picture frame, nothing but flies on the windscreen of fate, obfuscating the clear sight on vital information while people are in need – while children loose their arms and legs due to the lack of means for early proper surgery.
SahanaPy Haiti Response
The Sahana Software Foundation operates a SahanaPy instance at:
Services provided so far include:
- Capturing of information about Aid Organisations, their offices and their activities on-site
- Situation Mapping
- Request Management
If you think of volunteering for Sahana – welcome! – we have plenty of tasks for you, e.g.:
- Data collection and entry
- Documentation
- Translation (French, Haitian Creole)
- Code-writing
- Coordination of volunteers
- Communications
Join us on IRC:
International Forum on Disaster Nursing
I am currently in Kobe/Japan for a meeting on the International Forum of Disaster Nursing, presenting about our works in SahanaPy and the development cluster approach.
From the initial meetings, especially with Mrs. Janice Kishner (East Jefferson General Hospital, New Orleans), it is again clear that nurses are a leading force in emergency management, and there is a demand for tools like SahanaPy to better handle the situation, especially regarding:
- Logistics
- People Tracking and Tracing
- Human Resources Management
This confirms the priority list I already had for my SahanaPy works.
On the other hand, there’s still a huge need for localisation – and for better streamlining the development and project management in Sahana(Py) in general. There’s a lot of potential input, if we only take it up effectively and in time.
A portal supporting clusters from the foundation website would be very useful in this regard.
dict.cc
For a very long time now, I’m using dict.cc to write all my english texts – be it blog entries, wiki pages, presentations, code comments, instant messages or e-mails – whatever. Just to look up a word or to check a phrase, check my spelling, find alternate expressions…yes – I even use it to train my pronunciation before talks and presentations – using dict.cc’s audio representation feature for many words. Dict.cc has accompanied me in years, it has become somewhat a part of my personal infrastructure – and has definitly made me better talk to many people all around the globe.
I’m really delighted with dict.cc, which meanwhile has grown up to a top-featured, community-written online dictionary for German/English into multiple European languages. It’s outstanding availability, performance and it’s usablity with such invaluable features like phrase search, synonym search, audio representation and more make it one of the most useful web sites I have ever seen. And it’s QA mechanisms make it one of the most trustable translation resources on the web.
And as priceless as it is – it’s free!
Thousand thanks to Paul Hemetsberger and all the contributors!
Keep up the good work!
Sahana Presentation at University KinDAI Himeji
| 2010-01-12 |
“Open Source Technology for the Education and Deployment of Disaster Nurses”
