OpenMRS

The Open Medical Record System (OpenMRS) is a global community working together to build the world’s leading open source enterprise electronic medical record system platform with the mission to improve healthcare delivery in resource-constrained environments.

This community brings together volunteers from many different backgrounds, including technology, health care, and international development. Together, they are working to build the world’s largest and most flexible technology platform to support delivery of health care in some of the most challenging environments on the planet, where AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria afflict the lives of millions of people.

Our world continues to be ravaged by pandemics of epic proportions, as over 40 million people are infected with diseases such as HIV/AIDS, multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, and malaria – most (up to 95%) of these afflictions are present in developing countries. Prevention and treatment interventions on this scale require efficient information management, which is critical as clinical care must increasingly be entrusted to less skilled providers. Whether for lack of time, developers, or money, most health care programs in developing countries manage their information with simple spreadsheets or small, poorly designed databases – if anything at all. To help them, we need to find a way not only to improve management tools, but also to reduce unnecessary, duplicate efforts.

As a response to these challenges, OpenMRS was created in 2004 as a open source medical record system platform for developing countries – a tide which rises all ships. OpenMRS is a multi-institution, non-profit collaborative led by Regenstrief Institute, and Partners In Health, a Boston-based philanthropic organization with a focus on improving the lives of underprivileged people worldwide through health care service and advocacy.

These teams nurture a growing worldwide network of individuals and organizations all focused on creating medical record systems and a corresponding implementation network to allow system development self reliance within resource constrained environments.

You don’t need to be a programmer or a physician to help save lives. Find out how to get involved in the OpenMRS community, try out a demo, or download OpenMRS for free today.