I stumbled across this mailing list in my Google travels, and I thought I'd drop a quick note to you all, as you seem like likely allies in the type of work our group is fostering. I'm one of the co-founders of the OpenMRS (http://www.openmrs.org) collaborative, and we're always looking for folks interested in creating HIT infrastructures for developing countries. Here's a quick overview of our project:
------ I. What is OpenMRS? Our world continues to be ravaged by a pandemic of epic proportions, as over 40 million people are infected with or dying from HIV. The vast majority of these people (up to 95%) are in developing countries. The severity of this pandemic necessitates rapid, coordinated efforts toward HIV prevention and treatment which rely upon efficient information management. In 2004, researchers at the Regenstrief Institute (http://www.regenstrief.org) served as consultants to scale up a pre-existing MS Access®-based HIV management system within western Kenya. Their response was to begin the design and development of the AMPATH Medical Record System (AMRS). When work on this project began in earnest, the team investigated other "best of breed" solutions. It became clear that the overwhelming need for basic clinical data management (often to provide outcome data to funding agencies) along with the needs for rapid solutions in the face of limited technical resources typically led to disparate, "stovepipe" efforts which often stored computer uninterpretable clinical data that rarely scaled well in both size and functionality. To combat these common shortcomings, the AMRS team evolved their early work into a collaboration with Harvard's Partners In Health (PIH) initiative (http://www.pih.org). The product of this collaboration, OpenMRS (http://www.openmrs.org) represents an earnest attempt to create the foundation for collaborative medical record system development within developing countries, by serving as a common foundation and set of open-source "building blocks" from which fledgling implementations can begin constructing health information systems. II. Who is OpenMRS for? OpenMRS is for people that need to implement medical record systems. It is a scalable health-centric database design, a Java-based library of API calls to this schema, and a default implementation of those API calls in the form of a web application. It has also evolved a modular architecture which provides third party developers with a framework to customize extended functionality of this base architecture. III. How much does OpenMRS cost? OpenMRS is a free program, and the source is released under a close equivalent of the Mozilla Public License. IV. Where is OpenMRS being used? OpenMRS is currently implemented in Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, amd Tanzania. Further implementations are underway in multiple other locations throughout Africa through the work of such groups as the Millenium Village Project and FACES. Over nine million discrete observations have been collected for over 42,000 HIV patients with over 450,000 encounters within the AMPATH implementation in Kenya. The MRC team in South Africa is leading the effort to form an implementers group to aid in further implementations. V. Why should I use OpenMRS? At this stage, OpenMRS requires fairly sophisticated awareness of how to install and develop medical record systems. It is not a shrink-wrapped project, by design. However, teams in several developing countries are in various stages of implementing OpenMRS at this time. To serve less technically inclined future implementations, the collaborative is working toward a pre-built implementation that would allow more clinic sites to take advantage of a sophisticated, scalable system without needing the expertise to maintain and support and this work at low levels. OpenMRS is driven by a concept dictionary, allowing for the collection of coded, reusable data without requiring changes to the data model. Furthermore, OpenMRS has not been developed with exclusive notions of providing only HIV care, so it can be adapted for use in tuberculosis, malaria, or general medical care. Finally, OpenMRS is based upon the cumulative experience of over 40+ years at Regenstrief Institute, international leaders in the development of medical information systems within the United States. ------ We would love to hear from folks, in particular who have the following skill sets: 1) database performance optimization 2) OLAP / reporting database design 3) Hibernate ORM Additionally, new Java programmers are always welcome to join us. I hope to be able to contribute to your conversations in the days to come. Best, -Paul --- Paul G. Biondich, MD, MS Investigator, Regenstrief Institute, Inc. Assistant Professor of Pediatrics / Informatics Riley Hosptial for Children / IU School of Medicine E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] O: 317-278-3466 / 317-630-7070
