Background

Under its mandate from the US CDC, UCSF was tasked with supporting the digitization of HIV care through OpenMRS in multiple countries. However, as UCSF worked with healthcare facilities, it became clear that there was a broader need: supporting primary care required more than an EMR system. This realization prompted UCSF to expand beyond the core EMR functionality of OpenMRS and develop a solution that could manage comprehensive primary care workflows more broadly.

Challenge

The challenge UCSF faced was twofold:

1. Enhancing OpenMRS to Support Primary Care
   OpenMRS has been successful in managing patient records for HIV care, but primary care involves additional workflows, such as billing, stock management, and pharmacy operations. UCSF needed to evolve OpenMRS into a more comprehensive health information system (HIS) that could handle these diverse needs.
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2. Empowering Smaller Facilities
   Many smaller healthcare facilities—sometimes run by only one or two people—lacked the resources and capacity to engage fully with complex ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and LIMS (Laboratory Information Management Systems). These systems, while essential for primary care, often required extensive training and change management. At the same time, Ozone HIS is generally designed to support large facilities, such as hospitals or national digital health systems. UCSF needed to bridge this gap and provide a solution for smaller facilities that made critical functionalities accessible in a simplified way.

Solution: OpenMRS HIS Distribution Powered by Ozone HIS

To meet this need, UCSF and the Ozone team developed an enhanced OpenMRS HIS distribution, powered by Ozone HIS, that integrates OpenMRS with ERP system Odoo, LIMS system SENAITE, and Ozone Analytics. This distribution provides critical primary care support, including billing, stock, and pharmacy management, while offering a user-friendly interface suitable for smaller facilities.

Using Ozone’s Interoperability Layer (IOL) and a FHIR facade, this distribution enables healthcare workers to manage essential tasks directly from within the OpenMRS interface. It allows facilities to interact with ERP and LIMS systems through this FHIR facade without needing to engage fully with their complex user interfaces, making it easier for smaller sites to adopt these tools.

Crucially, this starter OpenMRS HIS distribution inherits from Ozone HIS, ensuring that it benefits from all current and future innovations that Ozone provides. By inheriting from Ozone HIS, this marks an endorsement of Ozone by the OpenMRS community, intertwining their futures and ensuring ongoing access to cutting-edge features.

Take-away: An Expanded, Flexible OpenMRS for Primary Care

This enhanced OpenMRS HIS distribution, powered by Ozone HIS, represents a significant leap in how OpenMRS can support not just HIV care but comprehensive primary care. It simplifies the adoption of critical non-EMR functionalities, such as billing and inventory management, for smaller healthcare facilities that might otherwise struggle with more complex systems. By integrating with Ozone HIS, the distribution is poised to evolve continuously, ensuring that healthcare systems benefit from future innovations. This alignment strengthens the bond between OpenMRS and Ozone HIS, setting the stage for a shared and interdependent roadmap that will benefit the global health community of implementers.

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