Social network of PESCA (Open Source Platform for eHealth)

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Software Engineering
• Information Science

Background:

• Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are transforming healthcare delivery.
• Open Source Software (OSS) is a key strategy for disseminating ICTs in healthcare.
• Significant human and technological barriers hinder OSS adoption in healthcare.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish a platform for evaluating, classifying, and validating good practices in health OSS.
• To develop a normalization platform offering interoperable solutions for healthcare services, surveillance, literature, education, and research.
• To create a collaborative infrastructure organized as a social network for eHealth OSS evaluation.

Main Methods:

• Organizing the platform as a social network for collaborative work.
• Evaluating existing open source eHealth tools across five scopes: OSS, Quality, Pedagogical, Security and privacy, and Internationalization/I18N.
• Collecting knowledge through networking to build a Good Practice Repository.

Main Results:

• Identification of human barriers (e.g., user acceptance, limited support) and technological barriers (e.g., need for standards, lack of validation).
• Development of a social network infrastructure for collaborative evaluation of eHealth OSS.
• Initiation of a Good Practice Repository for eHealth, promoting effective ICT use.

Conclusions:

• The PESCA project aims to overcome OSS adoption barriers in healthcare.
• The developed platform and repository will foster the effective use of ICT for citizen health.
• Interoperable solutions and validated practices will advance eHealth.