OpenMRS is a collaborative open-source project to develop software to support the delivery of health care in developing countries.
OpenMRS is founded on the principles of openness and sharing of ideas, software and strategies for deployment and use. The system is designed to be usable in very resource poor environments and can be modified with the addition of new data items, forms and reports without programming. It is intended as a platform that many organizations can adopt and modify avoiding the need to develop a system from scratch.
OpenMRS, Inc. is a registered non-profit that is the owner of all OpenMRS materials and the maintainer of the software's Public License. This entity will represent the OpenMRS project in legal and financial matters.
License
The software is licensed under the Mozilla Public License version 2.0 with an added "Healthcare Disclaimer". It requires that recipients are entitled to freely access the source code, but allows binary distribution, modification of the code (under the same license) and bundling into larger products that are under different licenses.
History
OpenMRS grew out of the critical need to scale up the treatment of HIV in Africa but from the start was conceived as a general purpose electronic medical record system that could support the full range of medical treatments. The first ideas and prototype of OpenMRS were conceived by Paul Biondich and Burke Mamlin from the Regenstrief Institute, Indiana on a visit to the Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH) project in Eldoret, Kenya in February 2004. Around the same time the team at Partners In Health led by Hamish Fraser and Darius Jazayeri were looking at ways to scale up the web-based medical record system developed to manage drug resistant tuberculosis in Peru, and HIV in rural Haiti. Paul, Burke and Hamish met in September 2004 at the Medinfo conference in San Francisco, and recognized they had a common approach to medical information systems and a similar philosophy for healthcare and development and OpenMRS was born. Later, Chris Seebregts of the South African Medical Research Council became the fourth founding member. In 2005, Dr. Andrew S. Kanter from Columbia University joined the team. Dr. Kanter was directing the Millennium Villages Project's (MVP) health information systems and selected OpenMRS for use in the ten MVP countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Design
The OpenMRS code is based on a "concept dictionary" that describes all the data items that can be stored in the system such as clinical findings, laboratory test results or socio-economic data. This approach avoids the need to modify the database structure to add new diseases, for example, and facilitates sharing of data dictionaries between projects and sites. An important feature of OpenMRS is its modular construction which allows the programming of new functions without modifying the core code. OpenMRS is web based but can be deployed on a single laptop or on a large server and runs on Linux, Windows or Mac OS X.
Other key features of OpenMRS: Built on the MySQL database (but uses Hibernate allowing it to be ported to other databases) Programmed in Java Includes tools for data export and reporting Versions currently exist for HIV/AIDS, Drug resistant TB, primary care and oncology Supports open standards for medical data exchange including HL7, FHIR, LOINC and IXF Form-based tools, such as the Form Entry module and XForms module Provides access to between-release code through "Continuous Deployment" Bidirectional synchronization with systems such as Mobile Technology for Community Health (MOTECH) and the Treatment and Research AIDS Centre's TRACnet system The Atlas module, which gives information on all OpenMRS facilities using a visual map Can be integrated with SMS messaging
New features (OpenMRS 1.9 and later): Allows older versions to run without upgrading Tools to link to hand held devices and cell phones (using JavaRosa) Research data collection tools for clinical trials and community data collection projects New Columbia International eHealth Laboratory (CIEL) dictionary entries Patient dashboard tab-loading rendered on-demand via AJAX to decrease lag
Currently being tested/developed: API support for order entry that provides support of orders within the system HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) support for OpenMRS Anatomical drawing tool with pre-loads image and blank canvas options User interface improvements Ebola treatment unit electronic medical record as a response to the 2014 Ebola epidemic Message delivery triggered by a trend in data entry