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How it works

What is this?

A tool that turns a photo of a paper health record into typed, filed data — without the patient's name ever leaving Vanuatu. Vanuatu's paper records are aging, rain-damaged and easy to lose. The Ministry of Health's own Digital Health Strategy commits to digitising them. This is one careful way to do that part.

What leaves my phone?

Only two things: the photo after the names are blacked out, and your typed notes after names become codes like [PERSON_001].

Never: the original photo, the real names, or the list that connects codes to people. That list is called the vault, and it stays on the device — which is why the codes can be turned back into names here, and nowhere else.

Why do I black out the top of the card?

Because a photo carries the name in the picture itself. Asking the computer politely not to read it is not protection — removing the pixels is. You cover the names once; the tool destroys those parts of the image before anything is sent, and the receiving end checks the blacked-out areas really are black. If they are not, it refuses.

Why did it turn my medicine into a code? / Why didn't it?

It decides by where words sit on the form, not by a list of names. After “Nem blong mama:” is a person; after “Traitement:” is medicine. So Wilson disease and Apgar Score stay — they are named after long-dead doctors, not your patient — while a name in a name box is hidden even when the tool has never seen that name before. English, French and Bislama are all understood.

Why does it say some fields could not be read?

On purpose. These records go into someone's permanent chart. A blank can be filled in later from the paper; a confidently wrong number — a 7 read as a 1 — becomes a wrong dose that nobody catches. So the tool is told: if you cannot read it clearly, say so. Blanks are honesty, not failure.

Does it diagnose or give medical advice?

No, and it never will here. It copies what is written — it does not judge, suggest or flag. A clinician reads and signs everything before it is filed. The moment software starts suggesting diagnoses it becomes a regulated medical device; copying faithfully keeps it a filing tool, which is what an archive needs.

Why can't I use a real patient's record?

This site is for practice only — the sample card, or a card you made up. Real patient records need two more things first: approval from the Vanuatu National Health Research and Ethics Committee (VNHREC), and a facility deployment whose server runs inside Vanuatu. The covering tool works either way, but a control is not a permission.

What does “Practice mode” mean?

This public site has no facility server connected, so nothing is sent anywhere, ever — the “Read the page” step stays off. At a health facility, the same tool connects to a server in-country, the page is read into typed fields, and a clinician checks the result. You can still see exactly what would be sent, and save a copy of it, in practice mode.

Who built this and why?

An independent contribution aimed at Pillar 1 of the Vanuatu Digital Health Strategy 2025–2030 — the commitment to scan and archive paper records. It feeds the systems the Pacific already uses rather than replacing them. The full written case, with every figure sourced and dated, is on the main page.

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