The Brazilian National EMR

I was at a party the other night, having a lively discussion about the state of technology with James Gosling of Sun Microsystems and...

I'm sorry, but I've always wanted to start a blog post like that. Does that make me a geek? Or a nerd?

Anyway, we were discussing the Brazilian Healthcare IT system, which as it turns out has a number of interesting features, for example:

• It is completely paperless, you do everything on a computer or cell phone, and everybody in Brazil has a cell phone.
  
• By data-linking doctors' prescriptions with pharmacy refill orders, it all but eliminated drug fraud.
• It can track influenza outbreaks in real time.
• Your personal health record works just as well if you're a tribesman with no name living in a canoe on the Amazon River.
  
• It is the world's largest open source project.
  

More on that later.