My Ideas, Suggestions, and Contributions for Bahmni (India Specific)
It’s been almost 1.5 years since I reached out to this community. Over this time, I’ve made an extensive list of ideas, observations, and suggestions based on real-world usage in a hospital setting.
Full Notes & Implementation Reference:
Bahmni Implementation - Dr. Sivaram
General Feedback
Please prioritize improving the doctor-facing UI and workflow instead of adding newer features. The core premise and clinical work flow need to be more intuitive and efficient. Compared to commercial alternatives, Bahmni still falls behind in easing the day-to-day workload of doctors and staff.
Suggestions (in no specific order)
- Integrate Appointment Module with Doctor Portal
- Allow doctors to set review dates after prescribing medication.
- This should auto-register into the Appointment module, reducing reception workload.
- Implement BAHMNI NEXT Medication Page
- Reference
- It’s vastly superior to the current drug entry method. I urge developers to focus here.
- Standardize Document Formats
- Please don’t put them as hospital-specific/implementation specific. NABH-accredited hospitals already use 90% similar forms only.
- Develop a standard template set, customizable only in minor areas.
- Workflow Support for Insurance-Centric Hospitals
- Many hospitals now handle insured patients; soon it will be universal.
- Required documents to support this include:
- Discharge Summary (NABH format)
- Fitness Certificate
- Medical Certificate
- Referral Letter
- Patient Satisfaction Feedback
- General Consent Form
- Informed Consent Forms (Anesthesia, Surgery, HIV Testing, ICU, Blood transfusion, Chemotherapy, etc.)
- Nutritional Screening/Assessment
- Pre/Post-Operative Checklists
- T.P.R Chart, Intake/Output Chart, Drug Chart
- Nurse’s Report, Death Summary, Death Certificate
- Billing Requirements:
- Hospital Bill
- Pharmacy Bill
- Lab Bill
- Procedure Bill
- Consolidated Bill
- All with proper bill numbers and formats required by insurance providers.
- All the above documents should pull the correct data from Bahmni backend. Most of the reference can be found here : https://nabh.co/sdm_downloads/
- ICD Code Integration in the above documents
- Brand + Generic Name in Prescription
- Common feature in modern HMS.
- Simplified Consultation UI
- One-page or two-tab layout instead of the current 5+ tabs.
- Registration Page Improvements
- Recent patient list(atleast last 30 or user configurable) with actions for the receptionist like selecting multiple doctors/departments for consultation , Marking them who referred , or adding specific notes to convey to doctors. Even giving internal use scoring/rating for patient.
- Internal Patient Referrals
- Allow referring to another department + auto-populate in Appointment page.
- Vitals Entry
- Use modern UI elements (sliders/icons) for quick and error-free entry.
- Staff Entry Page
- A dedicated space for staff to enter patient history or other filler info before the doctor sees them.
- Mobile UI Compatibility
- Migration / Upgrade Support
- Make it easier to migrate customizations from older Bahmni versions.
- Free Quantity in Purchase Bills
- Needs core support in Odoo from Bahmni team.
- This is essential for any functioning pharmacy and not just a customization.
- Odoo Module Enhancements
- Support for billing in strips, bottles, tablets, with correct calculations based on input.
Will try to add more to this list and also add my contributions in coming days.
I think every year , the dev team has to look into other commercial offerings and decide the road map. At the end of the day , its who gives comfortable experience. IMHO , no doctor is well tuned or knows ins and outs to run a self hosted bahmni. they are bound to rely on implementors , that literally makes this a commercial software only. If thats the case , developers HAVE to do a reality check with other software from time to time. I have demoed software which have integrated so well , that staffs or EMR/Casualty can call for ambulance from the software itself. There is also an option to automatically put a notification to house keeping to clean the room once a patient is discharged. Not to mention the automatic emails/sms/whatsapp integration , QR code generations etc etc.
Bahmni can have a commercial wing and support these extensive features at nominal pricing, the adoption rate will be through the roof. Currently most hospital setup are at mercy or either single developer or local software vendor , who locks database and what not. BUT , they give the comfort of usage , make doctors life easy, they have formatted documents , ready to bill (gst) features with all the latest bells and whistles like QRcode payment etc.
Think of it Wordpress and WPASTRA , WooCommerce, Yoast SEO ,etc. Wordpress is opensource , but these commerical offering elevate the WP experience , making it leader and relevant till date.
TLDR ; Dear Developers , improve the UI and overall workflow for doctors and staff , i dont need snomed , abdm integration , latest features.. just make the basics work. And more importantly the base bahmni should have most common things covered , not leave it to implementers or doctor specific.