Hello and good morning, my name is BENJAMIN HAINDAPA. I recently joined this community and am very excited to travel along with this community in this new journey.
I am very interested in learning so much about OpenMRS and also getting hands on experience in developing a system for a hospital in Papua New Guinea using OpenMRS.
How can I get started on developing a hospital system?
Welcome to the community, Benjamin!
I am also a developer and a newcomer to the OpenMRS ecosystem, but I am very willing to help you. To provide the best guidance, I would love to know more about the scope of the system you are planning. Is the goal to implement a core Health Information Management System, or are you looking for more advanced integrations like a PACS for medical imaging or a dedicated Lab Management System?
Knowing these details will help me understand the technical requirements.
Hello and good evening from PNG. Thank you so much for the reply. The plan is to have Open MRS as a hospital Management System for several hospitals in my country. I am also new to OpenMRS but definitely not new to understanding the concepts of Global Goods. I have been involved with configuration and customization using DHIS2 and would like hands on exposure to using OpenMRS to set up hospital information management systems.
The plan really is to try it out in a small hospital and see its full functionality in that setting.
What are your thoughts on this?
Is it possible that we can work together to try and create or develop a Hospital Information Management System for the Kagua District Hospital in my country?
I would like to learn about the system also as we move along. I’ve already downloaded the IDE for OpenMRS on my laptop already.
To implement a core information Management System.
I am available to support you through the process. We are customising OpenMRS currently for a country within West Africa.
Hello Joseph,
I really appreciate the reply and the support you are committing to help out.
Thank you so much. The hospital I have in mind is a District Hospital that supports around 200,000 population and others that come to seek services there.
Thank you so much. I’m so excited and willing to learn much as well through this process.
Hi @bhaindapa We have a ready-to-use product that has been developed for small hospitals and larger settings. It is being used to run OpenMRS on a Raspberry Pi. Our team at EMR4All has also developed an interoperability platform that connects multiple health facilities to a centralised hub. We developed this starting from rural hospitals to high-level hospitals where internet and electricity are not stable. If you want a cloud or on-premises solution, we can set it up quickly, as we did in Nigeria. We have other solutions, including OpenMRS AI, and our team is quite expert in OpenMRS. We are happy to support the deployment of O3 and testing the use of EMR4All equipment for small hospitals. The goal of our mission is to reduce the cost of equipment running OpenMRS for all types of health facility, from rural to urban, using Raspberry Pi devices, and enable them to overcome the challenges of internet and electricity issues. We are glad to support.
We are official implementer of OpenMRS : Our Partners - OpenMRS
You can also find our blog post: The EMR4All Journey: How a Volunteer-Led Mission is Transforming Digital Health in Remote Communities - OpenMRS
Hello and good evening Benjamin. Thank you so much for reaching out to me. I’m truly humbled and so excited that you are here to support me through this process. Yes, that would be really great. What do I need to do to support you in getting this project started. I am asking if I could be supported with installation of the system and the environment that the platform can run on as well. How can I install that platform on my laptop? I am so grateful for the support you are giving to go through this.
Is the hospital using a hardware server, or how would you prefer to deploy it? . You can run it on a local server at the hospital with exited server if aney and local network to department units, if there is already a network at the hospital. If not, it is something that can be figured out with routers and wireless enxtenders if you don’t want to make cables . Another question is about the type of OpenMRs module you are interested in, as there are a couple of distributions and mudles. If you want to start with the basic use of OpenMRS, I would recommend to O3 you can have features such as patient management, appointments, lab work, pharmacy management, finance management, etc. to help you get to grips with the system, and then you can choose if you want more advanced features later. However, our team can support you in deploying and training your team to roll it out to the health facility
You can start discovering OpenMRS by exploring the demo version Demo - OpenMRS , which will give you an overview of the system itself and its features. The O3 is a Dockerised system, so I would highly recommend getting a Raspberry Pi ( cost less than 200 usd) instead of using your own PC. You can set it up and take it to the hospital, where our team can support you in setting it up in less than two hours. You just need to run a few lines of code that we have made available on our GitHub, and then you’re ready to go. Then, get two tablets that you will connect directly to the Raspberry Pi (the OpenMRS server), and ask clinicians to start using them. The tablets will connect to the hotspot that the system is equipped with. You can then extend it with more features, for which our developers can provide assistance for further customisation . This can help you get a pilot to run at a cheap cost before scaleup
That would be be great. I am exploring the demo version now. I will definitely get the Raspberry Pi and the 2 tablets as mentioned. Once I’m familiar with it then We can start moving ahead with the suggestions you made. Thank you so much
The hospital does not have a hardware or any server as well.
Most of the health facilities in PNG are rural most don’t have built in infrastructure to support such platforms. There definitely needs to be another server option to support the platform.
Thanks alot that’s what we’re mainly focusing on. The mission of the EMR4All project is to implement solutions that enable all hospitals around the world to have access to OpenMRS, regardless of their location. That’s why we set up this project and achieved positive results in rural hospitals such in Nigeria. You can review our community presentation about the results EMR4ALL Nigeria Pilot – OpenMRS on Raspberry Pi | Implementers Conference 2025, Kampala you can reachout to our group talk Members - EMR4All - OpenMRS Talk for tailored discussion or reachout directly to our team on our Slack channels on OpenMRS or Join EMR4All on Slack to get assistance We are a non-profit organization aiming to promote OpenMRS volunteers work and adhere to the community code of conduct
Thanks Benjamin. I will definitely do that. This will truly need the technical support of the Community. OpenMRS has not been deployed before in Papua New Guinea public hospitals and if we get this through then it will definitely be a milestone for my country. Thank you so much.
Sure, you can start with the basic Raspberry Pi hardware kit and then move on to more advanced equipment to handle a large patient flow. Here’s a resource you can use to get started about the EMR4All (it’s an older document, but it can serve as basic information about the project) Thank a lot for choosing OpenMRS and partnering with EMR4All
EMR4All - Solution MoH.pdf (1.7 MB)
Thank you so much. I am going still going through the Demo of OpenMRS. Thank you for sending the additional documents, I really appreciate it.
Just a question, where can I obtain the basic Raspberry Pi Hardware kit?
Have found these sellers in PNG https://www.jaycar.co.nz/raspberry-pi-4b-single-board-computer-4gb/p/XC9100
Hi @bhaindapa , since you are in NPG you can find Resellers in Australia or New Zealand. I go this one in Australia Raspberry Pi 5 – Pi Australia
What you need to get: