Community Review Request: Age-Based Range Feature in OpenMRS

Community
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Hello OpenMRS Community,

I’m reaching out to request your review and input on our planned implementation of Age-Based Range Alerts. This feature will significantly enhance clinical decision support by providing dynamic reference ranges for vital signs and other fields based on patient characteristics.

Overview of Requirements

We’re planning to extend OpenMRS to support variable reference ranges starting with age-based alerts for vital signs. Currently, the system only supports static reference ranges regardless of patient factors, which creates challenges for clinicians working with diverse patient populations.

Seeking Your Input

Before we finalize our approach, we’d appreciate community feedback on several aspects:

  1. Are these Vital Signs Reference Range Data Accurate?

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  2. Are there additional fields we should consider?

  3. Has anyone attempted similar functionality? What challenges did you encounter?

  4. While we’re starting with age-based ranges, the plan is to extend support for other patient factors (sex, pregnancy etc). Any recommendations on prioritizing these extensions?

If you’ve worked on similar functionality or have insights from clinical practice that could inform our approach, we’d be grateful for your contribution.

Review Timeline

We hope to begin implementation in the next sprint, so early feedback would be especially valuable.

Thank you for your continued support in improving OpenMRS!

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Thanks for this, we are very much interested in this for KenyaEMR. We shall be making our contribution in due course

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Thanks @kmuiruri I would greatly appreciate your support in validating the Vital Signs Reference Range Data with some providers at the facilities.

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@veronica we’ll be happy to support. We have our clinical associate looking into this and we shall also run it through clinicians for alignment

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@veronica I think this will apply for Triage Early Warning Score (TEWs).

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@kmuiruri Thanks so much! I really appreciate the support. Looking forward to the insights from your clinical associate, and great to hear it’ll also be reviewed with the clinicians for alignment.

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Hello @veronica, The reference Range is accurate and helpful for monitoring vital signs, However, I think it’s also good to consider how fast breathing is defined especially in children under 5 years for early warning in triage: =>60breaths/min for infants under 2months =>50breaths/min for infants 2-11months =>40 for children 1-5years

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Hello @everlinebochere2023, Thank you for your review and valuable input!

You’re absolutely right—while general reference ranges are helpful for monitoring vital signs, it’s important to consider age-specific respiratory thresholds, particularly for children under five.

Appreciate you sharing the WHO-recommended cutoffs as well. @burke @grace, would love to hear your thoughts on incorporating this nuance for the under-fives.