OpenMRS is a free, open source software platform intended for implementing electronical medical records and data from outer sources in hospitals. It is used in many countries across 5 continents. Like all platforms, OpenMRS needs to be configured with metadata and parameters.
OpenMRS is a sister software of DHIS2, which is developed at UiO and is used in 100+ countries for primary health care and health statistics. The statistics module needs data from hospital information systems, including OpenMRS implementations.
The Health Information Systems Programme (HISP) Centre at the Department of Informatics has experienced that countries which adopted DHIS2 for health statistics 5-20 years ago, currently struggle to implement electronic medical record systems in their hospitals. One of our many partners, the University of Dar Es Salaam, has successfully configured OpenMRS in a small hospital and created an interoperability tool for sending numbers from the hospital system to the statistic module in DHIS2. Such a set-up can be adapted in other low-income countries, with no need for paying huge license bills to companies which have developed electronic medical record systems for high-tech hospitals. What these countries need are some local specialists who can set up and configure the systems.
The objective of the master thesis is to develop a training instance of OpenMRS with interoperability to DHIS2, capable of handling a class of students who learn system configuration, develop some learning material for the students, and evaluate the training instance and the learning material.
The HISP centre collaborates with universities in Africa and Asia to develop master programmes in health informatics. The training instances of OpenMRS and DHIS2 will be used by the students in these master programmes.
The master thesis will evaluate the developed OpenMRS instance with interoperability at the University of Oslo and in a university in Nepal. The evaluation should take place during the period Nov 2024-Jan 2025.
This thesis fits particularly well for students who have experience in teaching IT, for instance as a tutor at Ifi or an IT trainer.
The thesis is open to students from either of the master programmes
- Digitalization in the Health Sector
- Informatics: Design, Use, Interaction
- Informatics: Programming and System Architecture
It fits well for 2 students who want to collaborate during their thesis work.
