GNU Health (HPR Show 2093)

Dave Morriss

Table of Contents

Introduction

This is an interview with Dr Tom Kane and his student Euan Livingstone in Tom’s office at Edinburgh Napier University (ENU) on 2016-07-06.

Tom and Euan are investigating ways of running GNU Health for evaluation and demonstration purposes, using multiple Raspberry Pi systems and an Intel NUC. In particular they want to evaluate the conformity of interoperability (FHIR) standards, and are trying to build a reference implementation for decision makers who are procuring a Health and Hospital Information System.

In the interview Tom used some terminology that I have provided links for here and at the end:

I had forgotten where I’d seen Luis Falcón, originator of GNU Health, being interviewed. It was on FLOSS Weekly, as linked below.

Equipment

Pi Tower

The Raspberry Pi’s are able to run GNU Health itself.

The Raspberry Pi 3’s are not all in use all of the time yet. This is partly because the project is still in the development stage and partly because there is some doubt about the 10-port hub’s ability to power them all at the same time.

The Pi’s are all using Ethernet connections at the moment, though the built-in Wi-Fi is a possibility.

The topmost Pi is connected to a small SSD for storage purposes.

Tower of Pi
1. The tower of ten Raspberry Pi 3 systems

Tower of Pi with hub
2. The tower of ten Raspberry Pi 3 systems with the 10-port hub

Some of the Pi’s are mounted on case tops which had to be drilled out for the nylon stand-offs fixed to the boards. The original metal stand-offs had screws top and bottom, but removal of the screw heads allowed them to be joined together.

Using individual cases to make the tower
3. The tower made from modified individual cases

Close-up of the tower
4. Close-up of the tower

The 10-port hub
5. The 10-port hub may be a little under-powered for 10 Pi 3’s

Intel NUC

The NUC is used to run VMWare VMs running some of the support systems like a database, and the PACS image library. Further details below of what is is being run.

Intel NUC
6. An Intel NUC with an i7 processor, 16GB RAM and an SSD

Software

The NUC is being used to run virtual machines for setting up components needed to support GNU Health, like PostgreSQL, a PACS server and a LIMS server. Some of these have already been migrated to Raspberry Pi’s as shown below.

Virtual Machines

  • 4 x GNU Health application running on the Tryton Server, installed on Ubuntu 16
  • 1 x Shared database on a PostgreSQL Server, installed on Ubuntu 16
  • 1 x Orthanc PACS Server, installed on Ubuntu 16
  • 1 x BikaLIMS LIMS Server, installed on Ubuntu 16

Raspberry Pis

  • 4 x GNU Health application running on the Tryton Server, installed on Raspbian
  • 1 x GNU Health application running on the Tryton Server and a database on a PostgreSQL Server, installed on Raspbian
  • 1 x OrthancPi PACS Server, installed on Raspbian

Screen Images

GNU Health Web Interface
1. GNU Health Web Interface

Laboratory Information Management System
2. Laboratory Information Management System

Orthanc DICOM server for medical imaging
3. Orthanc DICOM server for medical imaging

Orthanc Web Viewer example image
4. Orthanc Web Viewer example image

Thanks

Thanks to Tom and Euan for taking the time to talk to me.