Excited to Begin My Journey as an OpenMRS Backend Engineering Fellow (2025)
Hi everyone,
I am Muhereza Herman, a software developer based in Uganda, and I’m thrilled to share that I’ve officially joined the OpenMRS Fellowship Program as a Backend Engineering Fellow for 2025.
My journey with OpenMRS hasn’t been without its challenges, but each step has been a valuable learning experience. I’ve had the incredible privilege of being mentored by this amazing community of members, especially in backend development.
In 2023, I participated in Google Summer of Code (GSoC), contributing to the OpenMRS FHIR2 module under the mentorship of @ibacher. In 2024, I was honored to work on the content Packages(v1) project, continuing my journey with the community as a backend fellow.
Now, as a 2025 fellow, I’m looking forward to deepening my skills under the continued mentorship of @ibacher and @dkayiwa.
The past few weeks have already been exciting, I’ve been working on improving the Installation Wizard, aligning its UI/UX with the current OpenMRS design system. You can check out the progress in this pull request, which also includes fixes for MySQL connectivity issues, navigation bugs, and session persistence to enhance user experience. I have also been reviewing GSoC proposals especially in the line of the project (Enhancing OpenAPI Documentation Generation) i will be co-mentoring with @chibongho1
In the coming weeks, I’ll be:
Continuing work on multiple property source support for the installation wizard / InitializationFilter (see PR)
Adding support for databases beyond MySQL in the wizard
Updating jQuery based scripts to modern alternatives
Enhancing the SDK’s ability to resolve artifacts deployed on GitHub Packages, a step towards unblocking the PATH-DRC team
Tackling any high priority or urgent tasks that may need to jump the queue.
Special thanks to @janflowers@grace for the confidence and the chance to better myself in this field as we work towards touching more lives with our product. I am excited for what lies ahead and grateful to be part of such a vibrant, supportive community. Let’s keep building
Wow Herman, I can’t believe you have already made UI progress! I’m star struck.
Here are the recordings of the UI progress, in case anyone missed them in the linked PR:
Install Wizard UI Improvements:
Error Message Handling:
Keep up the amazing work Herman! This project is so important and valuable. We keep hearing over and over that, in general, implementers want/need OpenMRS to be faster, easier, and clearer to install. Your work is game-changing at making this happen
And nowwwww for some extremely minor nit-picks
All the fonts should be Roboto, to be consistent with the O3 product. I think I see Arial?
“OpenMRS” links to the website, i could give it better wording maybe to show that.
I could use all the feedback i can get on this, for anyone who tries to build against the core master branch should be able to play around with the new installation wizard and then provide feedback for fixes to come in asap.
Huge congratulations on your selection as a Backend Engineering Fellow for the OpenMRS Fellowship Program 2025! Your journey from GSoC to contributing to key OpenMRS modules and now mentoring others is incredibly inspiring. It’s clear that your dedication, resilience, and willingness to learn have truly paid off.
Your work on improving the Installation Wizard, expanding database support, and strengthening the SDK reflects a deep commitment to both technical excellence and the greater mission of OpenMRS—to improve global health through open technology.
Wishing you continued growth and success as you contribute to projects that make real-world impact. Also, for anyone navigating their own wellness journey, I recommend checking out this helpful resource:
http://mentalhealthconnect.co/
Excited to Begin My Journey as an OpenMRS Backend Engineering Fellow (2025) 
I’m star struck.
Your journey from GSoC to contributing to key OpenMRS modules and now mentoring others is incredibly inspiring. It’s clear that your dedication, resilience, and willingness to learn have truly paid off.