Over the months since we’ve launched OpenEMR HQ we’ve spent a lot of time talking to people who are in love with the idea and functionality of OpenEMR but absolutely HATE the user interface. Over and over I’ve been asked “what are you guys and the developers doing to make it easier to use and prettier?” and I’ve pretty much standardised on telling them that we’ll customize it to look however they need if they want us to.
But I’m wondering what IS going on on the UI front of OpenEMR? Is anyone working on making changes that will make the software more user-friendly in appearance? I’ve seen the latest release (as have a few of our clients) and I can say it’s not a huge step forward (sorry devs, just reporting what I’m hearing in the field) in user friendliness at all. In fact, we’ve decided to stick with the older version that had the old interface for now. We’ve considered rewriting the front-end but don’t want to step on anyone’s toes by doing so.
Can anyone clue me in as to what kinds of UI work is going on or where we might be able to help out on it?
The interface is not great, but our end users say it is much better than any of the commercial products, especially when they get used to the OpenEMR colour scheme.
Changing the interface might be a good idea.
OSMS (the not-for-profit company behind OpenEMR) will soon post a pdf brochure about OpenEMR on www.oemr.org. It would be nice if we could mimick that lay out inside OpenEMR.
For my institute changing the lay out of the calendar is high on the list. The user interface for OpenEMR in general should be changed, but I do not expect we will work on it in the near future.
I definitely agree with your statement about OpenEMR having a better interface than what’s already out there. It never ceases to amaze me how vendors seem to put so little thought into their EMR interfaces. Some of what I’ve seen is, I think, barely usable. Yet, users slog on; hoping something better will come along.
I’d like to talk with someone at the OSMS about the layout as that would be something OpenEMR HQ would be *very* interested in taking on. We have some ideas based on feedback from our clients and we have a few UI designers on staff that we could assign to work on it. I think a better UI would do wonders to propel OpenEMR further into the limelight.
I’ll try to get one of our people in touch with someone at OSMS this week to start discussion.
I think this forum is a fine place to begin discussion. We want to include everyone who is willing to contribute to it.
Note there are now three options for calendar layout (see the user admin form), and separately from that, three options for overall GUI style in the current development code (see globals.php). Be sure to check those out for starters.
I’ve revamped the calendar for use without our Agency. You can check it out in the CVS tree. The calendar style name is ‘Outlook’.
I attempted to mimic an MS Outlook/GoogleCalendar look to it. I think it’s a more intuitive way of looking at the calendar. You can view the calendar by day, week and month. You can also PRINT the calendars in a format nearly identical to Outlook. This can be very helpful if your practice prints out the calendars for reference.
The new interface removed the capability to search for appointments but I intend to put that back in place in the very near future. It was removed to allow me to focus on developing the calendar UI.
In addition to the calendar I’ve reworked the ‘patient finder’ screens and have just completed some beautifying of the reports. OpenEMR already supports ‘themes’ to a certain degree. All of my changes are keeping an eye to that aspect. I’m slowing reworking parts of the code to lean heavily CSS so the OpenEMR UI can more easily be adjusted in the future.
If anyone has specific UI change requests, just let me know. I’ve got my fingers all over the place right now.
The light baby blue of the original OpenEMR interface has always been my favorite. Unfortunately many like "button" clicking. The New brochure looks great and I agree that this would be a useful overall theme.
I could certainly provide screen shots. They’re not terribly exciting since I don’t have a live database. They do demonstrate some of the features though:
- quickly identify overlapping events
- scrollable without scrolling the whole window
- simple calendar navigation
Here’s a quick collection for you to look over. Click on the images to see what the calendar looks like when printed: http://italktech.net/oemr/
The downside to using something that mimics the appearance of "Outlook" is that it may attract official attention from Microsoft. This is not something that will be good for the project.
And Dave, you are talking to OSMS right now. The board members are all actively reading these forums and participating the discussions. (Sam Bowen, MD, Rod Roark, Andres Paglayan, Tekkno Genius, Michiel Bosman, MD, Mark Leeds, DO).
I like the idea of carrying the color scheme from the brochure through to the default appearance of OpenEMR. As noted above I posted the brochure at http://www.oemr.org/files/OpenEMR-Brochure.pdf for all to view. This brochure is courtesy of Dr. Bosman and his company: Bosman GGZ. Dr. Bosman is taking the lead interms of marketing and would be an excellent person to help coordinate the appearance of the Brochure with OpenEMR.
I would love to get away from frames. From a design perspective frames are clunky and break up visual space in an unpleasant way. When I have the time, to do coding I like CSS. It loads fast and gives a lot of control over the appearance, though one has to be tricky to make sure the software works with all browers.
I think the name ‘Outlook’ could be changed to something else. I’ve only used it up till now because people are familiar with the name. The look-and-feel of the newest calendar is akin to Outlook but not identical. I doubt that MS could claim infringement on the styles being used. You’ll find the nearly the same stuff at Gmail Calendars, Yahoo calendars, Palm Pilot calendars, and several others. When deciding which interface to mimic I picked the current industry leaders knowing that most people would be familiar and comfortable using them in OpenEMR.
Originally I called the new calendar style ‘AJAX’ but that’s pretty meaningless to anybody but developers. How about any these for calendar names:
- Visual OEMR
- Desktop OEMR
Also, I’m in full agreement with Sam. CSS is the only way to go for styling anything on the Web. Using CSS was the only way to get the printed calendars to look the way I did. Frames aren’t the best but they’re deeply embedded into OpenEMR right now. So I’ve worked around them. I’d really like to see this project turn toward using the jQuery UI heavily. The Web 2.0 stuff in there can really make a web-app shine.
I like the direction you took with the calendar. I fully agree with Dave’s statement, “I think a better UI would do wonders to propel OpenEMR further into the limelight.” OpenEMR’s functionality is far more superior than our old MS Access EMR ( Amazing Charts ). Although I felt that AC’s UI was sleeker than OpenEMR’s, there is no comparison to OpenEMR’s functionality. OpenEMR has greatly improved efficiencies in the 3 months that it has been in production at our office. Our office staff and physician (my father) are greatly impressed with how robust and fast that OpenEMR is in comparison to Amazing Charts. AC cost us a $1000, but we did not know better at the time. A sleeker UI will truly make others take a closer look at the world of open source.
What ideas do you have in mind for the patient search? I was thinking a dynamic list box would be good. Anyways, excellent job on the calendar interface enhancements! I am looking forward to implementing it.
I’m going to suggest that for multi-provider layouts you may want to have horizontal scrolling as an option as well - what you’ve pictured works for 3 providers, but for 7-8 providers it could get a little hairy without 22" widescreen monitors.
Not sure what to suggest as the best way to implement. Normally I’d suggest CSS min-width, but it’s not supported by IE (there are hacks to make it work).
In the latest calendar, the only view which displays multiple providers side-by-side is the ‘day’ view. My gut feeling is that if you need to see 7 or 8 providers side-by-side you should use the week-view. That way each provider has their own weekly calendar displayed on the screen.
For a quick test I just chose 10 providers to view at once in the daily view. On an 800x600 pixel resolution view, which is what I’ve been designing for, the columns certainly get narrow and some text overlaps, but they work. A horizontal scrollbar does appear after about 7 providers are selected.
If I maximize the window on my 22" widescreen everyone fits nicely.
I like the idea of a min-width column setting via CSS. I’ll see about doing something about it. I already have at least one solution that could be done programmatically width the ‘width’ style attribute.
In our installation of OpenEMR we’re envisioning roughly 100 providers. There is never a case where all the providers would be seen in the window at one time. Typically our front-office users would look at the same people’s schedules day in and day out. I’d like to create a new database table named user_preferences which would store things such as the ‘most recently viewed providers’. That way the users wouldn’t need to do a multi-select each time they go into the application. Instead they could just rely on their preferences.
We are already having practices who have significant difficulty seeing anything more than 5-6 providers with calender deteriorating into an unseeable mess. This has led to scheduling errors.
Would it be possible to break the 100 provider scenario into smaller more manageable work groups?
A single clerk might managing the schedules of 5-6 providers. Perhaps arranged by the practitioners that work on a particular unit or a particular location? Michiel Bosman’s group has definitely having troubles with 15 providers on the screen.
The user preferences sounds nice. It would definitely be desirable if a clerk / user could have a "sticky view" that comes up as he/she logs on on a daily basis.
