Best Open Source EHR Systems to Consider

Managing the millions of records and treatment charts on paper is quite cumbersome and challenging for medical facilitators. The simplest way is to use EHR (Electronic Health Records) software to avoid illegible handwriting and error-prone subscription.

During the COVID, such software gained huge attraction and was considered to be a revolutionary product for healthcare organizations. As per the statistics, nearly 66 percent of users look for healthcare information on the internet and 88 percent of the people book an online appointment.

If you are quite clueless about Open EHR systems, you are at the right place because, in this blog, we will discuss the top EHR systems to consider and how they work.

EHR/EMR software — What are they?

EHR or EMR software has become quite integral for healthcare practitioners. They offer all patient information, medical histories, and treatment plans in one place. Also, they are quite known for their features that automate tiresome and mundane administrative tasks.

EHR software is quite powerful for managing various health records. Some of its use cases prevent any day-to-day attendant hassles, and no paper for record-keeping, and make the clinical workflows quite seamless.

Free open-source EHR software can offer numerous benefits if you are a small healthcare organization. It can minimize administrative errors and make the process quite efficient. In this article, we will emphasize more on the open-source healthcare system, which is available for free to use.

What Features does EHR/EMR software offer?

Every EHR/EMR software offers a variety of features. Even if you are getting customized EHR software from Open Source Development Services, you don’t need to get all the features that do not align with your business needs. Here are the top 8 qualities you should look for while choosing the best open-source EHR system.

Task management

A feature like Task Management in an EHR( electronic health record) software would be useful to assist practitioners and doctors in performing the following tasks.

• Set a reminder to finish small tasks like authorizing refills and signing notes.
• Set up a priority list of reminders to fulfill all the primary functions.
• Enable a doctor to differentiate between primary and secondary tasks.

Fee Management

Nothing could be better than electronic health records software with a payment and billings feature. Having such features could be useful in numerous ways. It can help to — —

• Remind patients about pending payments.
• Send invoices
• Keep track of medication refill expenditure.
• Upcoming expenses.
• Record of patient billing history.

Communication

Integrating a communication service with the EHR software such as Mirrofly, Twilo, or any other chat or video call API would help maintain the organization’s communication standards. Also, such features can make it quite quick for doctors and patients to clear any doubts regarding medication, reports, and prescriptions that are saved in the records. For online consultation, they can easily connect through a chat or a video call.

Lab analytics and Charting

Charting could be quite time-consuming sometimes and intensive. Doctors and nurses spend many hours filling the charts and preparing the documentation. With Electronic Health records, all the features could be easily amalgamated with the software to save time from doing any such tedious tasks.

Some of the features that can be included are

• Tailormade charting templates.
• Voice recognition feature
• AI and ML integration for accurate data analytics and automated Charting.

E-prescriptions

Doctors now do not need to use any mode that uses paper to write prescriptions. With the best EHR open-source healthcare software, it can be easily provided online ED prescriptions that prevent poorly written handwriting and allow you to take the printout or share it with the pharmacy directly. Most EHR software offers a secure portal for sharing and keeping the e-prescription safe. The concerned authorities and federal requirements highly regulate this feature.

Marketing Support

While you collect all the basic data about the patient, a report should be prepared by the EHR software about the performance output and the client base. Various specialized EHR software now offer features like data analytics that can help you to track all the information about the performance and find better strategies to market your clinic.

EHR software is always beneficial when it comes to accessing and reporting any sensitive or important healthcare information. Also, it allows you to share the data with your community and leverage that to market your clinic.

E Document conversion

Document conversion of scanning has become quite important nowadays for different healthcare institutions. An E document helps you to build tailor-made workflows for your needs and your clinic’s growth. A document scanning feature would help you eliminate the need to keep physical documents safe or fax or copy them which can delay a lot of work and sometimes, lead to missing paperwork.

Top 3 Best EHR Opensource Software to Consider?

One Touch EMR

OneTouch EMR is an open-source medicine precautionary management platform with features like patient records with complete history. Also, it offers some basic features like importing data from external programs, medical Charting, and annotating observations in healthcare records.

It is known for its scheduling software that allows patients and doctors to view all the appointments and categorize them based on day, week, or month. Also, it provides the status of the appointment if it’s confirmed, checked in, rescheduled, or canceled.

Based on the appointment booking, doctors and patients get the reminder through the automated messaging feature that helps them communicate further. Moreover, it allows doctors to create patient treatment plans and attach images of affected areas or injuries for further reference.

New Open Source Health (NOSH)

NOSH is one of the newly launched Open sources of Electronic medical software that helps with booking appointments, saving important documents and patient records, keeping track of all the inventories, and communicating with patients through chat or video calls. Moreover, it also provides some basic charting features to share in-depth details and keep track of patients’ demographics, medications, past encounters, supplements, and active issues.

Healthcare providers can also generate customized reports with all the active and historical medical issues and supply information. This customizable software can be integrated with several other third-party applications.

openEHR: Universal EHR

openEHR is the collection of various tools and specifications that helps healthcare providers to build custom medical healthcare software. One of the famous Implementations of the openEHR is Ether CIS. It is built by healthcare professionals and developers who steer the software development.

openEHR offers standard-based patient records and tools for application development querying language. Further, it also helps reduce costs if you use it as a base to build new EHR software.

The openEHR software has an open-source code that is free to download. You can easily set it or avail yourself of open-source software development services to implement it. openEHR software is Apache 2 licensed.

Implementing an Open source EHR software

Most of the time, small clinics or healthcare organizations do not have enough resources to put into things like the Management software of EHR. Once you have analyzed and evaluated the software and vendors, you never want to leave it. Since Implementation is the primary step to making custom EHR software for your clinic, you need to be quite careful while doing it, as it is not great to make mistakes. Some preliminary steps in implementing open-source EHR software are the following.

• Appoint an IT team or the implementation Manager

The IT team and project manager would help you to complete your EHR project as quickly as possible. Also, they would help you to train your staff and provide them guidance in using the EHR software.

• Analyze the complete process

Every task in the development process would require you to do an in-depth analysis and gain insights about the working of the software that will help you to know some implementation errors if any, and improvise further for the work effectiveness and efficiency. Also, you can find potential features where automation can replace manual work.

• Customization

Different clinics have different demands also. They need tailor-made security measures to prevent any data threats or hacks. The software’s access control should be designed so that only concerned people should be given the right to access any specific features. Some of the security measures one can take are 2-factor authentication and encrypting the crucial healthcare data of the patients symmetrically.

Conclusion

EHR software has made it relatively easy for healthcare organizations and doctors to manage various activities and patient records. Choosing the right open-source EHR software becomes relatively easy if you know what features you need, as listed above. Despite so much EHR software being available, owning it can be critical for healthcare organizations.

Most clinics do not have the heavy budgets to invest in such advanced software. But with the help of the best Open-source EHR software, they can save a huge amount of cost and get the features based on their requirements. If you want to know more you can consult with Open Source Customization Services. They would help you and guide you through the complete process of EHR software development.