Feature - Vietnam welcomes three new grid sites; hospitals get new ‘HOPE’

Participants from ACGRID school at Institute for Francophone Informatics (IFI) in Hanoi, October 2009. Image courtesy ACGRID. Image of Vietnamese flag on front page courtesy Wikipedia/Creative Commons

Vietnam hosts some of the world’s most biodiverse areas — with six biosphere reserves — along with one of the lowest unemployment rates in the third world and, as of last month, three of the newest grid sites to join the world’s largest grid computing infrastructure.

EUAsiaGrid was launched in April of 2008 to foster grid computing technology within Asia, and to create ties between the e-Infrastructure communities of Asia and Europe. Last month, EUAsiaGrid partners co-organized with the French research institute Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) the second ACGRID school, or Advanced Computing and Grid Technologies for Research, to train current and upcoming researchers and IT professionals how to harness grid power.

At the end of the two week training course the graduate-level students, hailing from Vietnam and neighboring countries, could use specific platforms and applications on the grid and administrate grid sites.

Image courtesy HOPE

Training for ‘HOPE’

 One of the platforms taught, called HOPE (HOspital Platform for E-health) developed jointly at CNRS and HealthGrid in France, allows hospital sites to exchange medical information. HOPE is now installed at the Institute of Information Technology in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, for testing. All going well, it will be installed in the primary Ho Chi Minh hospital. 

The HOPE web platform offers a complete, transparent and secure way to manage medical data files containing images, physician’s prescription and treatment plans – this ability will, particularly in developing countries, improve the standard of medical knowledge. The designers working on the HOPE interface sought  to create a natural workflow that enables easy searching, adding, updating, sharing and discussing clinical exams and their attached images.

The trainees also learned the work of grid administrators: installing, certifying and trouble shooting at a grid site. As a result of this school, three new nodes – one in Ho Chi Minh City and two in Hanoi – were certified by the Asia Pacific Regional Operations Center (APROC).

Next month another training school will be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from 2-14 November.

—Danielle Venton, EGEE