Referring large numbers of students with patients

I’m sorry if this seems very ignorant of me. I work in a university clinic responsible for diagnosing patients and referring them to hundreds of providers (students). I need a way to connect students directly to diagnosed patients so they can contact cases suitable for them and provide services to them. Is OpenMRS the right software for me? baring in mind that the students are in the hundreds and they will need that access through their home computers. Thank you.

Hello @hossam,

I would want to point out some points:

  • OpenMRS supports providers and patients so, handling many providers wont be an issue.
  • You need to host OpenMRS on a public IP to be accessible by providers sitting in their home.
  • Presently, there is no restriction for a provider and patient. Meaning if a provider is in the system and there is a patient in the system, the provider can access the patient record - So to meet your need of giving access of patient to the provider you only need to give the patient id that is generated/entered while entering patient details into the system. This will allow the provider to search for the patient.
  • If you don’t want a patient to be accessible to a provider not treating the patient directly then OpenMRS does not support this presently but, work is being done to support this as mentioned in this talk post:
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Hello @maurya Thank you for your quick response. I really appreciate your help. seems like this might be the perfect solution for me. I have a follow up question though: Can I design the module in a way that allows providers to not only access patients’ details (diagnosis and phone number) but also to inform the system somehow that this patient is already contacted so he/she is not contacted again by another provider that might also be interested? like, If I’m a provider and I see a patient’s record that I can help, I want to have a button or a check box to show that this patient is booked for me, then when I actually contact the patient and make an appointment, I want to inform the system as well that the patient is already taken. or maybe inform the system that I couldn’t contact the patient and that he/she is not booked any more. again, Thank you so much for your help. Hossam.

  1. The work I mentioned in the referred talk post is not in a module. So when you mention “Can I design the module in a way” I am not clear about the module you are referring.
  2. If you have developing skills or know someone who can write code in Java, you can create a module that does what you need. But, at present I am not aware of such functionality being available.
  3. As a workaround, you can use HTMLFormEntry module and create an entry form that needs to be entered by a provider when they are “booking” a patient, this will create an encounter in the patient dashboard. And you can keep a pre-condition that each provider has to first check if any provider has “booked” the patient before trying to book him by looking at the patient’s encounters.

Though what I mentioned in point 3 is a hack and should not be a permanent solution, that should get you started for your initial use.

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