We are getting requirement for management of blood bank. The requirements (not necessarily the solution) are similar to what has been mentioned here - http://marc.info/?l=openmrs-implementers&m=138031747014601&w=2 . But to start off, I am interested in understanding which system should this module be developed. This question is important to us because we are kind of spoilt for choice to implement - OpenMRS, OpenERP or OpenELIS. It could be a combination but I feel the core would be provided by only on the systems. Key things driving this decision in my mind are as follows :
from patient’s who receives (not gives) the blood perspective, the requirements do not deal much with his medical record. the person giving blood may undergo some examination too, but I am not sure whether he should be made a patient in the system for that.
there is an element of Laboratory around testing+processing of blood. To me Lab seems to be a transient system and not the core system.
the accepted blood when stored has some similarities with inventory and asset, but it is definitely not the exactly same as either of them. also the fact that people could get paid for donating blood provides a reason to do this in OpenERP
I could not find any good open source blood bank software.
I would like to hear thoughts on this from people who may have given more thought to this.
I had a discussion about blood bank a bunch of years ago (so this is hazy)
but remember hearing that there were strong requirements around
de-identification which made me feel that OpenMRS wasn’t really right for
this.
I think the HISP India team may have implemented this, actually.
I would think a blood bank would primarily be driven by inventory. A CPOE system within the EMR would generate requests for blood to be tested and given, the lab would do the blood typing, but the bulk of logistics for the blood bank would be managing inventory and fulfilling requests. So, if building a blood bank system, I would probably approach it as an inventory system (e.g., OpenERP) and expect to have integration with the EMR (e.g., OpenMRS) and lab (e.g., OpenELIS).
The HISP India bloodbank module is here - https://github.com/hispindia/bloodbank
But I agree with the @burke, that it is possibly better to use the inventory module for the blood acquisition, dispensing and the testing done through a lab system. And finally the ordering of those through OpenMRS. A lot of discussion was around whether to create a patient record for the person who provides/donates blood. This is particularly challenging when there are these donation drives and many people donate blood. You probably don’t want to get detailed person records, as much as simply tagging the blood bags in an inventory system