Note: This was originally sent as an email newsletter.
Quarterly Community Newsletter
January - March 2024
In this issue: Implementer News | Community Highlights | Product Updates
News from OpenMRS Implementers
Did you know: OpenMRS is used in over 80 countries worldwide!
We are always humbled by the incredible hard work of Implementing Organizations in the OpenMRS community. This quarter we’ll have a special look at the innovation happening in Kenya and Uganda.
Scaling Fast in Uganda
Video: Click to see the new UgandaEMR+, built on OpenMRS version 3!
The Uganda Ministry of Health has embarked on the journey to digitize 500 health facilities with point-of-care EMRs. This means less-paper or paperless! METS Uganda has been sharing their journey in 2024 as they roll out an updated version of OpenMRS in Uganda, “UgandaEMR+”, to multiple high-volume facilities.
METS in collaboration with MOH and partners has started conducting trainings, upgrades and supporting facilities to rollout point-of-care with UgandaEMR+.
Learn More about Uganda’s National Roll-Out 
Innovating in Kenya
Organizations across Kenya have been extremely hard at work throughout 2024 to enhance KenyaEMR into an Outpatient-Department-Friendly system using the latest version of OpenMRS, “OpenMRS 3.x” or “O3”. What especially impressed us was the approach taken: from peer-support hackathons, to live-time facility feedback, to building features together with community members from other countries so the work is as sustainable as possible.
Video: Click to see how KenyaEMR is leveraging the new OpenMRS version 3!
Organizations Ampath, Health IT, Palladium, UCSF, NASCOP Kenya, and OpenMRS came together in Eldoret, Kenya, to support each other with upgrading to OpenMRS version 3. Details here.
Community Highlights
Election Results: Community Representative to the Board
Congratulations Antony Ojwang on being elected as the Community Representative to the OpenMRS Inc. Board of Directors!
Thank you to our members for your amazing turnout of over 900 total votes.
Launching the OpenMRS Academy: Virtual and Online
This January our Community Management team hit the ground running with two weeks of community-wide Virtual Academies, with over 100 participants.
- Week one focused on the fundamentals: Introduction to health IT, OpenMRS evolution, data model, concept dictionary, design, community conventions, and more.
- Week two was more technical with topics revolving around concept mapping, OpenMRS Design Systems & Tools, Frontend Development, Backend Development: Data Model & APIs for O3, Quality Assurance Processes & Tools, and how to configure OpenMRS just with JSON.
This virtual event has helped us set up the first ever OpenMRS Academy Online!
Explore the online academy for video tutorials, quizzes, and more!
OpenMRS Chosen for Google Summer of Code 2024
OpenMRS has been chosen as a mentoring organization for Google’s Summer of Code (GSoC) for over fifteen amazing years, and we’re absolutely stoked to keep this journey going with all of you! GSoC is a key way OpenMRS finds promising individuals for our community’s talent pipeline.
Learn about OpenMRS GSoC Projects in 2024
Video: Click to see an introduction to Google Summer of Code
Celebrating Dev Stage Advancements
Every so often, OpenMRS receives submissions of community members to be considered for dev stage advancement. The OpenMRS’ Global Support Team reviews submissions and checks them both against Our Dev Stage Criteria and based on how these contributors are actively applying their abilities in the community. We celebrate the following for achieving a new stage by peer recommendation this quarter:
@frederic.deniger, @jofrancisco, @luis.oliveira, @icrc.psousa, @thembo42, @jamiearodi, and @kajambiya
Also Seen Around the Community…
Planning a Better OPD Experience: Representatives from UCSF, OpenMRS, Mekom Solutions, Sonder Design, Palladium-Kenya, METS Uganda, and University of Nairobi came together in Mombasa in February to plan how to work together on OpenMRS Outpatient features in 2024.
February Time Together: Community members hanging out on a Saturday in Nairobi, Kenya. From L to R: Jamie Arodi (UCSF), Nyevu Karisa (IntelliSOFT), Grace Potma (OpenMRS Global Support), Michael Ndula (IntelliSOFT), Jacinta Gichuhi (Palladium), and Joshua Murithi (Palladium).
Welcoming New Members to the Global Support Team
We are delighted to welcome new members to the OpenMRS Global Support Team! Support for these exceptional individuals was made possible for the next 6 months through generous contributions from Donors and Grantors via OpenMRS Inc.
- Wikum Weerakutti (@wikumc): Fellowship in Backend Development
- Scott Businge (@scott): Supporting community DevOps and infrastructure
- Paul Adams (@pauladams): Supporting community UX Design needs
- Jeremiah Mwiinga (@jmwiinga): Technical Project Management
Learn More about Roles in OpenMRS
Product Updates
New Features and Fixes in the first release of 2024!
The latest version of OpenMRS, “O3”, continues to grow! Learn more about our latest releases with features and fixes, including these and much more:
- Improvements to handling of page loading, error messages, history API, and importmap reloads to improve overall developer experience.
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Lab and Drug order improvements, including field validation. - Queues and appointments stability and user flow improvements.
Learn More about OpenMRS Releases
The OpenMRS Squads are WOW-ing us!
The OpenMRS Community “Squad Model” is quickly proliferating! A Squad is a group of community members working together on specific, discrete solutions to a shared problem(s), usually with 2 or more Implementing Organizations represented. We find this model yields:
- More generalizable, re-useable technical solutions
- Successfully co-maintained code (since implementers are not alone in maintaining their own forked custom features)
- Better use of funder investment across implementers.
We now consistently see 40 active members from 9+ member organizations in our weekly Squad Leaders update call. Much of OpenMRS feature development and the product roadmap is directly driven by these squads!
Learn More about Active Squads
Did you know?
OpenMRS.org is now auto-translated in over 45 languages!
French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Bengali, Swahili, Lao and more! Learn more and share your feedback here.
Stay Connected
We are better together!