Hello Everyone!
I had a chance to connect with @gkinyua to discuss and get a sense of what the Billing Squad has accomplished and what’s coming next for them. Find the summary of our discussions below:
Background and Achievements
The Billing Squad was formed following an OPD workshop aimed at enhancing OpenMRS to support outpatient department workflows. This initiative involved collaboration with various implementers to strategize on necessary improvements. They adopted and generalized Palladium Kenya’s O3 billing module, initially based on Banda Health’s OpenMRS Cashier module. This involved significant customization to remove Kenya-specific elements.
The team undertook extensive code cleanup and configured currency settings to make the billing module applicable in different regions, ensuring that it can be easily adapted for use in various countries.
Current Work and Pending Tasks
-
Integration into OpenMRS Distro: The primary focus is finalizing the billing module’s integration into the OpenMRS distro, ensuring it is available upon initial download and startup. The relevant pull request is active and undergoing final cleanup.
-
Multiple Payment Associations: The team is working on enabling multiple payment associations, which allows bills to be paid in parts (e.g., splitting a bill of 1000 shillings into payments of 500, 200, and 300 shillings). Necessary billing concepts (like cash payment options, payment account types, and billing status) have been added to OCL. Part of the work involves adding billing domains to Iniz. The PR for this is open and being cleaned up to meet standards.
-
Internal and Release QA: The module is currently undergoing internal QA. The next step will be a thorough release QA to ensure it meets all necessary standards and functions correctly.
Target Release: The goal is to have the billing module ready for release by the end of July.
Proudest Achievements
Gilbert shared that one of the team’s proudest achievements is having the billing module in the Reference Application. This integration simplifies the deployment for countries and implementers, reducing the resources needed for custom development. This is particularly beneficial for large-scale implementations like KenyaEMR and Rwanda, saving time and effort in gathering user requirements and building functionalities from scratch.
Future Plans
Post-release, the plan is to engage with the initiators of the billing module (like Palladium Kenya) to align functionalities and incorporate additional requirements identified by implementers. The feedback from current implementers will be used to enhance the module further.