Introduction
The GNU Health Plugins are client-side programs that provide extra functionality. They are installed locally.
Initialize the plugin directory
The GNU Health plugins are installed in your $HOME directory, under “gnuhealth_plugins”.
$ mkdir $HOME/gnuhealth_plugins
In order to keep the GNU Health plugins compatible with the latest client, you need to create a link to the GNU Health plugins directory
$ ln -si $HOME/gnuhealth_plugins $HOME/.config/gnuhealth/4.4/plugins
Camera Plugin
The camera plugin allows to visualize, transfer and store media from a webcam device ( camera, microscope, … ).
There are many contexts where the camera is useful, some of them :
Person or patient registration
Domiciliary units surveys
Histological studies
EKG strips
Telemedicine
Dx Imaging
The information captured by the device will be transferred and stored in the GNU Health server.
Installing OpenCV
The GNU Health camera uses the excellent Open Computer Vision library (“OpenCV”). You need to install the opencv package for your operating system.
Install the Python bindings for OpenCV of your distribution. In Debian & openSUSE the package is python3-opencv and in Archlinux python-opencv.
Besides you can take it directly from PyPI as opencv-python.
In order to check the correct installation of OpenCV import the module CV2 in the python interpreter:
$ python3
Python 3.10.12 (main, Nov 20 2023, 15:14:05) [GCC 11.4.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import cv2
>>>
If no errors, the installation is successful!
Installing the Camera Plugin
Download and uncompress the latest version of the camera plugin and finally move it into your plugins directory:
$ wget https://codeberg.org/gnuhealth/client-plugins/releases/download/v4.4.1-camera/gnuhealth_plugin_camera-4.4.1.tar.gz
$ tar -xzvf gnuhealth_plugin_camera-4.4.1.tar.gz
$ mv gnuhealth_camera $HOME/gnuhealth_plugins/camera
Afterwards restart the client.
Invoking the Camera Plugin
From the client, click on the Launch action icon, and select GNU Health Camera.
Using the Camera
“a” : attach any media taken from the camera device into the current model.
[SPACE] : store the media as a binary field, for instance, as the person / patient picture. To store the media as a picture, press the SPACE bar. Currently GNU Health has the party model person picture predefined.
“h” : Show the help menu
“q” : Quit the camera
After you transfer the media, you need to refresh the current view [CONTROL + R]
Crypto plugin
GNU Health implemented signing documents with the GNU Privacy Guard plugin. It could also be modified in order to encrypt documents.
The Crypto plugin works along with the GNU Health Crypto Module.
Warning
These packages are installed in the client, NOT in the server
In order to use it, you need the following in your client:
The GNU Health crypto plugin itself. It is shipped with the main tarball when following the Vanilla installation. Besides it can be downloaded here:
The GPG package (comes with most modern operating systems).
A GPG key which is accessible by the operating system user running the client - if you want to make signatures.
The python-gnupg library (https://pypi.org/project/python-gnupg/).
Note that everything except the GPG key is in place when using the Ansible installation with the default configuration (and one is created if setting gpg to true).
Installation of the Crypto plugin
The procedure is the same as for the camera:
Place the “crypto” directory containing the plugin under the “gnuhealth_plugins” directory.`
$ wget https://codeberg.org/gnuhealth/client-plugins/releases/download/v4.4.1/gnuhealth_plugin_crypto-4.4.1.tar.gz
$ tar -xvf gnuhealth_plugin_crypto-4.4.1.tar.gz
$ mv crypto $HOME/gnuhealth_plugins/