Dear OpenMRS Implementers, My name is Bobby Palmer and I am a second year medical student at University of Central Florida College of Medicine in Orlando, FL. Being a newer medical program without an established international project, last December our students teamed up with the Latin American Medical Association at the University of South Florida College of Medicine and participated in a short term medical in a town bordering Jarabacoa of the Dominican Republic. The objective was to observe how an established short term trip operates. The site location, Los Hatillos, has been managed for over a decade by Project World Health at USF COM <http://www.projectworldhealth.org/>. During our visit, we kept paper records, and later transferred them to an Excel spreadsheet. Yet, despite our efforts to maintain accurate and precise records, we encountered many of the typical problems inherit to a paper-based system in a rural resource-poor area.
Upon returning to Orlando, I decided to make this problem the focus of my FIRE project <http://www.med.ucf.edu/research/studentresearch/fire/>, a component of the first two years of our curriculum that allows students to study a particular area of interest. I had recently read Tracy Kidder’s *Mountains Beyond Mountains* and decided to start investigating Partners In Health’s medical system. This lead me to OpenMRS which I have been following and familiarizing myself with since January. I wrote a short proposal that is attached to this email (caution: a few of the initial plans have been augmented since the proposal's creation). Originally, I had proposed setting up a network system based at the local university, however, at present I feel the most viable option for initial testing is to use OpenMRS Standalone installed on our school-issued laptops. Currently, we plan to return in December and I hope to utilize this system as a means of objectively evaluating the trip’s impact. I have been in contact with faculty at university located nearby in La Vega in hopes of collaborating with them to make this idea a long-term sustainable project. I would appreciate any input or information regarding this project and any current projects in the Dominican Republic. Finally, despite countless hours reading OpenMRS Wikis, I am still not sure how to add a patient encounter and was wondering if anyone could direct me; I have been able to modify patient encounters in the OpenMRS Standalone with demo date. I do not have a background in computer programming. Warmest regards, Bobby -- Robert C. Palmer, MS-2 UCF College of Medicine Class of 2014 _________________________________________ To unsubscribe from OpenMRS Implementers' mailing list, send an e-mail to [email protected] with "SIGNOFF openmrs-implement-l" in the body (not the subject) of your e-mail. [mailto:[email protected]?body=SIGNOFF%20openmrs-implement-l]
