Dear OpenMRS Implementers, My name is Tobin Greensweig and I am a medical student at the Medical School for International Health in Be'er Sheva, Israel. I am somewhat new to the OpenMRS community and wanted to introduce myself before joining the Implementers Forum tomorrow. I've been spending a lot of time reading the wiki and archives and am so impressed by the remarkable work contributed by all.
A bit about my background: Last summer (2010) I spent two months at the Village Health Works clinic in Burundi and designed/implemented an Access Database for EMR and pharmacy management. It's used in both point of care settings and as a "backup" to paper charts that we simultaneously implemented. Today it contains records for more than 15,000 patients and has become an integral part of the clinical operations and M&E. While constructing the database, I visited PIH Rwinkwavu for feedback from the EMR team and to feel better about committing what felt to be a treasonous act implementing a custom solution when OpenMRS was available. After the visit (and great education), I felt and still feel today that Access was the better fit, mainly due to IT support constraints and the learning curve involved with OpenMRS. That said, I think with some small tweaks and additional resources, OpenMRS would likely have been a far superior solution. As I did a year ago, I strongly believe in the OpenMRS model and think that the exact same challenges which restricted implementing OpenMRS in Burundi also exist many other places. I think that some simple solutions could be easily incorporated into the community resources and software to overcome these barriers. I am interested in contributing to this effort with the hopes of making OpenMRS more accessible for even the most basic, resource strapped clinics. I have ideas ranging from expanded YouTube tutorials to more turn-key software distributions....I'm very interested to hear what others are working on! Looking forward to meeting everyone tomorrow and perhaps in Kigali, Tobin ----- Tobin Greensweig, MS-2 Medical School for International Health, Ben Gurion University of the Negev _________________________________________ 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]
