Birthday Alerts

wagenisa wrote on Thursday, June 02, 2011:

We are implementing OpenEMR for a Pediatrician who has requested a birthday reminder feature. Is their an existing capability in OpenEMR or is there someone who has implemented something close to that?

Ideally, the Doctor requires the system to alert him (either as a pop-up or in the calendar) of upcoming birthday anniversaries for his patients, say 2 days earlier so that he can send them cards or email by the exact date.

nevillefm wrote on Saturday, June 04, 2011:

That would be a great feature. I know the date of birth is right there on top of the screen, but I’m usually checking it after I get to know it from the patient in front of me. Even a same day popup or highlight would help in greeting the patient on arrival. It’s wierd how often patients come in on their birthday.

ajperezcrespo wrote on Tuesday, July 05, 2011:

Can rules be used to create this?  I see that tables can be selected and even specific fields.  ie openemr->patient_data->DOB.

bradymiller wrote on Wednesday, July 06, 2011:

hi,
CDR (ie. rules) would likely need to have birthday specific code to deal with it specifically. So, could create a birthday rule, place pre and post dates, and then set as patient reminder and then deal with this rule specifically by writing code in the reminders.php library functions. Would be rather difficult if you don’t understand the CDR mechanism and library functions.
If want to do this may be much easier to do following for:
1) if want to send email to patients then cron a quick php script that looks through patients and then sends the birthdays emails for applicable patients
2) If want to remind doc if birthday is that day or close could place a message at top of patient summary screen (check out the Deceased mechanism there to get an idea of good placement).
-brady