National EMR & Reporting: The Cambodia Multi-Stakeholder Story

How Cambodia’s Ministry of Health and the World Bank are scaling a nation-wide, NCD-focused EMR with OpenMRS 3, Ozone and Ozone Analytics for comprehensive, complex reporting.

November 2, 2024
•
8
min read
OpenMRS
NCD care
Cambodia
Background

As part of the HEQIP II project, the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) set out to enhance healthcare services for underserved populations and build robust digital health infrastructure. With support from the World Bank Group (WBG), the Ministry of Health (MOH) identified a need for a patient information system to drive its Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) program. This system would not only manage patient data but also support comprehensive population health reporting.

Challenge: Laying a Rapid Foundation for NCD Care and Beyond

How to quickly launch a pilot phase with a stable, scalable solution that addresses immediate NCD-related needs while providing a foundation for future growth. The solution also needed to support both Khmer (ភាសាខ្មែរ) and English, facilitate population health reporting, without DHIS2 which wasn’t in use by the RGC. This multi-donor, multi-stakeholder decision-making process, led by the WBG, required careful alignment to meet the needs of all involved and the tight timeline.

Solution: Ozone, A Scalable EMR with Built-in Analytics

An options analysis led by the WBG identified OpenMRS 3—the latest version of the widely-used, open-source EMR system—as the best fit for Cambodia’s NCD care needs. Already familiar to some Cambodian health workers (in the private NGO sector), OpenMRS provided a strong foundation for frontline care delivery.

To support future scalability and leverage robust reporting capabilities, OpenMRS was implemented through Ozone. This integration enabled the immediate use of Ozone Analytics, facilitating the rapid deployment of dozens of reports specified by the MOH.

Take-away: Sustainable, Scalable NCD System Across Cambodia

By selecting OpenMRS 3 within Ozone, the Cambodian government strengthened its digital health infrastructure with open-source, sustainable platforms that support both functional goals for NCD care and streamlined future maintenance. Now deployed in over 160 facilities, the system provides the MOH with real-time reporting for improved decision-making.

Get started with 3 commands in a terminal...

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ozone-his/ozone/main/scripts/install-stable.sh | bash /dev/stdin
cd ozone/run/docker/scripts/
./start-demo.sh