Giving away music for African health IT

IntraHealth Open, whose goal is to improve health care in developing countries, has created an Open Council featuring such open source leaders as Red Hat, The Linux Foundation, GNOME, O'Reilly, and Novell.

The group believes that open source hardware and software, running on mobile networks, can revolutionize the health care system in the developing world.

The effort also publicizes the album's producer, Oseao Media, and the Senegalese artist Youssef N'Dour, whose song Wake Up is remixed by a variety of artists to create the album.

Among the technologies being pushed is the Moca Project, sponsored by MIT, which uses Android-based devices and Linux servers to do scans, make simple diagnoses, and perform follow-ups using existing mobile networks and WiFi where available.

UPDATE: An IntraHealth spokesman writes to say that Moca is not technically part of their effort.

Moca, in turn, is based on OpenMRS, an open source electronic health record framework launched in 2004 by the Regenstrieff Institute and Partners in Health.

Or as N'Dour sings, Wake up this morning, this is Dacca calling.