Compare OpenEMR, OpenMRS, technology(expand/modify functionality), future(mobile), trained tech resources

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My requirement is for Outpatient Wellness Clinic(Primary Care Doctor, Dietitian) in the USA

  1. Patient Portal needed
  2. Adding lot of educational material - customized for each patient.
  3. Integration with (blood, urine)diagnostic labs like Quest Diagnostics, Labcorp needed
  4. Collecting payment (credit card) for services needed.

Kindly let me know if I can use OpenMRS for this. Also - is there a technology comparison available for OpenMRS vs OpenEMR? In terms of :

  1. Which one supports mobile platform better?
  2. Which one can be expanded more easily ( add more fields to vitals etc.)?
  3. Which one can be integrated better with say a vitals machine, so patient’s BP etc can be automatically updated into EMR?
  4. #3 but with patient physically outside the clinic, patient’s mobile smartphone acting as medical device to determine BP, Pulse and feeding it over the internet to OpenMRS
  5. Easy reporting of patients by demographics, medical conditions.
  6. Availability of technology consultants to customize/support the EMR solution. Appreciate your help. M S
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  1. Which one supports mobile platform better? - This very much depends upon specific user case and what particular technology you are looking at. Both solutions can be tailored and customised to practically any particular medical business model. I generally support the openMRSs project mostly because it seems (from the research that I’ve done) to have a broader more active community behind the project.

  2. Which one can be expanded more easily ( add more fields to vitals etc.)? My understanding is that both solutions can be tailored to provide more fields in any particular way that you would like. Unfortunately this question is a little bit of a “how long is a piece of string” sort of question unless you are more specific about how and what you want to change.

  3. Which one can be integrated better with say a vitals machine, so patient’s BP etc can be automatically updated into EMR? This is generally hard to do because of the proprietary nature of biomedical devices, finding a biomedical device that has an open API interface to pass data would be the first step to working out which solution would best fit to that model/product.

  4. #3 but with patient physically outside the clinic, patient’s mobile smartphone acting as medical device to determine BP, Pulse and feeding it over the internet to OpenMRS also once again can be done with relative ease from the OpenMRS side of things however really is determined by which particular biofeedback/biomedical devices you’re using on which particular mobile platform.

  5. Easy reporting of patients by demographics, medical conditions. Both have relatively good reporting solutions, however because reporting is such a specific domain and generally I’ve found each organisation has its own specific requirements that require best poke reporting it is also hard to value one solution against the other. The good thing about open source solutions is that customisability and interoperability provide the opportunity to add any particular reporting environment you would like on top of the solution stack.

  6. Availability of technology consultants to customize/support the EMR solution. This is mostly determined by your geographic location, there is quite a lot of community implementers and some commercial implementers within North America. However once again really is also determined by the type a solution that you’re trying to provide. The number one takeaway from my response would be that both open source solutions are not a “off-the-shelf” “turnkey” solution that can be implemented and switched on without a consumer amount of design work and thinking. I hope that helps …. About the solution allow an informed person to assist you more effectively. Regards Olie

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Regarding #3 Which one can be integrated better with say a vitals machine, so patient’s BP etc can be automatically updated into EMR? This is generally hard to do because of the proprietary nature of biomedical devices, finding a biomedical device that has an open API interface to pass data would be the first step to working out which solution would best fit to that model/product. If i have a few simple, unidirectional POC devices to interface and have the API, which would be a better choice to OpenEMR or OpenERS