Hello, My name is Cheenu soni. I am an Android Developer with 2 years of experience in it. I am experienced in REST APIs and golang too. I was looking to create an Android app for the OpenEMR. Please let me know if I can start working on it. Are there any available android apps? or Can I start from scratch? I was looking to implement functionalities as seen on “OpenEMR 5.0.2 Main Demo” website in the app just for now. Then I will work on including features of Patient portal too.
Hi @NullByte ,
Would recommend instead building against the development demos (these are built daily from most recent codebase):
https://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Development_Demo#Daily_Build_Development_Demos
(btw, the api’s are turned on these demos)
There are no available OpenEMR android apps (historically in remote past, there have been several attempts, but nothing ever of production quality). Would the app wrap a browser or would it be using the API?
Also looks like the mentors will get to learn about Go 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEFXjRoac_U
thanks,
-brady
Since there are no OpenEMR android apps as of now, I’ll start working on the app straight away
And no, I intend to make the app as standalone as possible. So I can add or remove individual features directly in the app. So it would be making use of APIs, and will not be wrapping any browser.
Thanks
Just a side note. There are several vendors that do have mobile apps written for OpenEMR using both standard REST api and FHIR api, such as it’s limits are today.
Can you please provide me the links of their source code ( if they are open source) or the app apk links, if possible, so I can get an idea of the UI/UX. And may I ask why were they not approved as the official app for OpenEMR ? I am really confused whether I should work on these existing prototypes, or create a completely new app.
Thank You
We have many vendors that do value added features for OpenEMR. Best we can do with regards to an approval process for these features is by way of recommendations and some vetting of the vendor themselves ie our vendors approved listings.
Of the app’s I know about, they are mainly concerned with Patient Reported Outcomes(PRO) or analytics. I’m not sure of their release stages but check app stores.
My view and vision for applications is that every customer of OpenEMR will need to determine if applications have access to their instance or not. Currently this is controlled by whether client app has access to practice backend through OpenEMR users authorization to access our api’s.
The path forward will be that the practice will assign an auth token to any client for access. How OpenEMR decides to either list or recommend clients has yet to be decided.
For what type of client application would be of interest to our installed base you’d need to concentrate on features that makes work flows easier for the providers. For a patient centric app you’ll need to get creative. One thought would need the app to be FHIR smart where the app could talk to any of patients current providers EHR’s. And so forth.
Or create your own version of portal or an ability of a quick lookup for an item in patient chart for reference at a specialist office say, “When was it I got that flu shot?”.
Hi,
Definitely think starting from scratch with an open license/code is the way to go here. This does bring up an interesting point regarding OpenEMR’s current API. It is currently user/provider centric (ie. authentication is for users/providers and not for patients), so would not currently support patient portal features in its current form (this of course could be dealt with though).
As a prototype, could just shoot for showing the list of appt (ie. calendar) for a provider/user in order to build out the framework for authentication, token management, gui in the app.
-brady
Could if a current portal patient using those credentials.
@NullByte We started exploring this about a year ago. There are isolated cases where some have developed targeted solutions but no one has come forward with a base. While Hello World type of project is easy to build there are several architectural issues pop up as numbers of users increases.
If you have specific ideas, I can offer my 2 cents.
If you are looking for some ideas, here are couple of suggestions:
- Rather than android app, consider building foundation for an web app.
- If your objectives are towards leveraging your android skills, consider the starter app that exposes capabilities similar to @sjpadgett’s portal but more relevant to device form factor.
- If you have experience in image recognition, consider a simple but really useful app where patient can take picture of their medicine label and app will submit that as patient reported medication.
Hello @brady.miller @mdsupport @sjpadgett ,
My name is Amit Meena. I am doing development for over 3 years now and have completed 10+ apps, out of which 2 apps are currently in use at the production level.
I was thinking it will be a good option if we can go with a hybrid app/web app instead of a platform-specific app. Also, I agree with @mdsupport that starting with something which can avail patients a new and easy feature will be a better option than replicating what is already available.
Here, I wanna propose a hybrid app with functionalities that required image recognition. We can start from the simplest implementation like reading medicine info from an image then may move to a higher level where we can make the app capable of extracting meaningful interpretation out of the medical monitor. Also, we can replicate the functionalities which are frequently used from the website to the app for easy access.
I wanna mention one of my apps which I mentored recently. The aim was to provide an app that can be used by the patient to read the heartbeat at home without any need for a medical device. The targeted audience was pregnant women. App used the simple tech of a camera and flash for it and was capable of reading the child’s heartbeat along with the mother.
thanks-
Amit
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I will look into this thread.
I also came across this thread, a day or two ago, while learning about OpenEMR OpenEMR / Discussion / Developers: openemr-app Android OpenEMR client .
It’s really massive, but in the last few comments, I came to know that the author of the app pulled his code due to worries about some legal issues or something. And I couldn’t find the source code anywhere.
Anyway, I’ll consider working on the ideas you, @sjpadgett and @brady.miller suggested.
I am still reading the docs to get more and more familiar with OpenEMR.
Thank you
FYI - Sourceforge was predecessor to this forum. All messages were copied including the one you reference.
Hi @NullByte so glad to have you on board.
One of the things I think it would be great for the app to do is scan barcodes and qr codes.
I’m working on implantable devices which come with a 1D/linear barcode.
But I see that some vaccines are moving to 2D barcodes(QR codes)
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/iis/2d-vaccine-barcodes/about.html
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Feature request for patient side version of an android app that I think dovetails nicely with the MAR(Medication Administration Record) GSOC Project.
Medical/noncompliance and Medical nonadherence are a significant contributor to poor health outcomes and otherwise unnecessary healthcare spending. This can occur for a variety of reasons. Inaffordability of medications, difficulty of access, stopping medication when you start feeling better (e.g antibiotics and antidepressants), unpleasant side effects, etc.
https://jaoa.org/article.aspx?articleid=2538817
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3976600/
WHO on tuberculosis nonadherence
https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/85/5/06-038927/en/
In a nut shell, for a variety of reasons people are pretty bad about taking their pills and adhering to their treatment plan. The sooner a clinician can identify a problem with their medication adherence it could prevent adverse outcomes like hospital re-admittance for psychological issues, complications from high blood pressure, etc.
I believe for things like birthcontrol of antiretroviral meds like for HIV it is crucial a person takes them as close to the same time everyday or there could be significant consequences.
It seems to be that clincian observed taking of medication is the gold standard for ensuring adherence.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hec.3570
There is some traction with “smart pill boxes” however I believe those would be easy for a determined patient to trick simply by opening and closing the lid.
https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/pn.44.22.psychnews_44_22_026
Also the pill box wouldn’t work for injectable meds, eye drops, or medications administered some other way.
While the clinician can’t be in your home with you, people have posited that recording yourself taking you medication and sending it securely to the provider with an app can be a suitable alternative.
eMocha is an example of this. https://emocha.com/our-solution/for-health-systems-providers/
The app should be able to set medication reminders that can be snoozed. Record video with the app, not storing on the device, transmit it securely to OpenEMR with timestamp and other metadata.
Alerting the clinician that the patient missed one or several doses and prompting them to reach out might be a good idea. This might be able to be taken care of on the server side.
The server side can probably allow the user to configure how long to keep the recording. It would be nice to make a tool that allows you to set “audits” by a human person at a specific frequency per patient, to make sure they’re not just recording something random.