I know I’m a little late to the thread, here… so a little background -
I’m Rick. I worked for Community Health Systems in the US, a Fortune 100 Healthcare Management company which owns 200+ hospitals across the country. Now, I’m working for an official ONC Accredited Test Laboratory (ATL). I’ve just installed OpenMRS to begin validating some of our test cases and procedure for both the 2014 R2 Final rule, and upcoming 2015 Final Rule on EHR accreditation.
I understand that OpenMRS, Inc. may not have, or choose not to spend, the funding to apply for MU accreditation. That being said, I think this an amazing framework which really encompasses the ‘modular’ direction that EHR systems are going to be moving towards, in the near future. The same direction that the ONC is moving towards in their HIT certification models.
I would love to get a chance to speak with someone with OpenMRS, Inc., about working with them to gain MU clearance in the US… possibly through our ATL, since I’m already creating and updating test cases and scenarios against the OpenMRS platform. It seems to me (a HUGE open-source fan, by the way) that it would seem only fair that; If certain modules and aspects of OpenMRS are capable of passing Meaningful Use standards and accreditation, found during our (basically) testing of our own lab environment before working with paying developers and customers, that someone at OpenMRS, Inc, should at least be notified of passing modules and features! Like I said, I’m a big fan of open source initiatives, and if there was any way we could partner up in a way which would benefit the community and both parties, I’d appreciate being able to speak to someone regarding this possibility. I look forward to helping this project in any way I can, and hopefully I can find the right people to talk to. Thanks!
@rickal, while our focus is on developing countries, you aren’t the first – and certainly won’t be the last – to consider how OpenMRS might fair with MU. As @akanter pointed out, most of what is shared by the OpenMRS community is a platform upon which implementers weave their specific solutions.
If there are MU tests you are evaluating using the platform ± specific modules, I’m certain that sharing this information could help others in the community. They might serve as a nidus for others to extend, they could generate useful bug reports, or they could help prioritize integration testing.
Cheers,
-Burke 
@rickal - I’m interested in talking further with you about this. We used MU as useful framing for a set of criteria to evaluate EMR implementation in Kenya about 4 or 5 years ago. Of course, several distributions of OpenMRS (three, as I recall) were eventually evaluated using this framework, and that evaluation played a role in the evolution of EMR selection and implementation in the country.
In those days, of course, it was MU stage 1, and a fairly high level framing. We’ll probably take another look at this in the future to support our work in Mozambique, and it would be great to be able to look at how OpenMRS is viewed through the lens of the 2014 R2 and 2015 Final rules.
I’m lober@uw.edu - let me know if you’d have time to talk on the phone with @janflowers and I about this. That might be a good starting point to explore the broader implications of certifying either the reference application or another distribution of OpenMRS.
i would be interested in talking also, as i was the CIO when Indian Health achieved ONC FY 11 certification; they have subsequently achieved ONC FY 14 certification ( stage 2). i was also at the VHA when we did the evaluation to get VistA to stage 1 ( FY 11) and the delta was significant- doable but significant. VA elected to get modular certification on approximately 20 modules and did not achieve overall certification. I believe that OpenMRS would be able to pass some of the test scripts and achieve some modular certification but there would need to be significant functionality added to get to FY 14 certification criteria. I can share the VistA evaluations that we did if they would be of interest. Perusing the test scripts is always a good place to start–it is sometimes easier to identify the deltas from the published scripts than from the certification criteria.
here is the NIST link for testing criteria and the platform tools that they have developed. NIST tends to be very open to dialogue ( they are not the certifying body) and accept feedback about the test scripts/ their interpretation of the MU criteria/ etc.
Rick, is MU for OpenMRS still on your radar?