Free medical tool tackles disease

[gkd_uk]

A free and simple piece of open source software is helping manage the spread of disease in developing countries.

The Open Medical Record System (OpenMRS) is providing countries, such as South Africa, with an online patient medical record system.

Users do not require any programming knowledge for the tool which helps improve how people are treated.

It could transform the prevention and treatment of diseases such as HIV and Aids, its developers say.

Many projects designed to tackle the disease manage their information with simple spreadsheets, poorly designed databases and sometimes nothing at all.

But with 40 million people infected or dying from the disease globally, the majority in developing countries, an effective medical record system has been badly needed.

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