Biomedical Informatics Research Division, Medical Research Council, Cape Town, ZA
Abstract
OpenMRS (www.openmrs.org) is a highly configurable open source electronic medical record system focused on developing countries. An international collaboration of individuals and institutions is contributing to developing and extending the core application and a network of implementers is configuring specific implementations of OpenMRS for treating and managing care for patients with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis at sites in Eastern and Southern Africa. Support is critical for successful implementation and an OpenMRS implementers group has been formed driven by developers of OpenMRS with initial implementers from Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa and pilot implementers in Lesotho, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. The OpenMRS implementers group not only provides a first line of support to other implementers, but also performs functional testing and documentation. Support for local customizations is mainly provided through the OpenMRS Wiki, forum, and two e-mail mailing lists. The mailing lists are fairly active and responsive to issues arising during implementation, allowing a reasonably high level of support to be maintained for specific in country implementations, and are supplemented with regular implementer meetings. Three meetings were held during 2006, in Eldoret, Cape Town and Dar-Es-Salaam. The first meeting of 2007 will take place in Mali during the Helina 2007 conference
