Join our community

Wonderful! Getting started with coding for OpenMRS is a fantastic way to contribute to global health while honing your software development skills. As an open-source project used in hospitals and clinics worldwide, OpenMRS provides real-world impact—your code can directly improve healthcare delivery in low-resource settings.


The community is welcoming, with extensive documentation, mentorship opportunities, and an active developer network to support newcomers. Plus, working with OpenMRS exposes you to key technologies like Java, JavaScript (mainly React), REST APIs, and healthcare interoperability standards like FHIR, making it a great learning experience for both beginners and experienced developers.

Go to our Getting Started Guide for Developers →

Review our Tech Stack →

Do you speak multiple languages? We need you! OpenMRS has a tremendous variety of users, and many of them require different languages. We are always looking for translation help – from junior to senior! Yes, this includes Right-to-Left languages as well!First: Join our Community of Translators

First: Have a look at the translator guide. To get started, go to our Guide: How to Translate OpenMRS

If this looks like what you’re looking for: Join our community of Translators. We love hearing about new people who want to contribute to translation. To share your interest or ask questions, please connect with us via:

• Our forum, OpenMRS Talk. You can specifically see translation-related posts where the translation tag is used.
• Our chat, OpenMRS Slack, using the #translation channel!

Then: Start Translating in Transifex. We use Transifex.com to translate OpenMRS. It’s pretty fun to use! If you speak a non-English language and would like to help translate OpenMRS, join our translation project and then follow our Guide to Using Transifex in OpenMRS. Welcome aboard!

It was my pleasure to contribute to OpenMRS and support such a valuable project. I’m glad that my contributions are making a difference. – Mayo Brahim, OpenMRS French Translation Contributor

Whether you’re a doctor, nurse, clinical officer, pharmacist, receptionist, or other healthcare staff member, your real-world experience is essential to shaping OpenMRS.

Listen-In: A great way to get started is to join our weekly Squads’ Call to listen-in about what features are currently being worked on, and which ones seem to require more clinical insight. Check the community calendar for the latest weekly call timing →

Help with Feature Requirements or Quality Assurance: See guidance on how to contribute to Requirements or QA →

WhatsApp “User Testing” Group for Providers in Low-Resource Settings: Because our software is used primarily in low-resource and LMIC settings, we deeply value insights from providers who understand the realities of delivering care in challenging environments. We host a WhatsApp group specifically for providers working in low-resource settings, to share quick feedback, ideas, and questions, and to test early designs or prototypes that support clinical care. Participation is voluntary and requires less than 30 minutes a month. We’d love to have your voice in the mix. Request to join our Healthcare Providers WhatsApp Group by contacting: community@openmrs.org

Implementers and vendors are at the heart of the OpenMRS ecosystem. Your organizations deploy OpenMRS in hospitals and health systems around the world, contribute upstream improvements, and guide the evolution of the platform through real implementation needs. Staff from implementer organizations typically contribute 40–50% of all updates in each OpenMRS release, making you an essential part of how OpenMRS grows and stays relevant.

Have your organization join our OpenMRS Partners Program: to gain visibility, build credibility, and earn community badges that recognize your contributions. As your organization participates more — from contributing code, to joining squads, to sharing implementation knowledge — you can earn higher badge levels.

Tell us about your Implementation or Business on OpenMRS Talk →

Learn about the OpenMRS Partners Program →

Explore how to earn and level up your Partner Badges →

See practical examples of organizations who have been awarded Partner Badges →

Find and Recruit Talent with our OpenMRS Community Jobs Page: Use our global network to find candidates for your OpenMRS work! We love it when organizations post job openings, because this helps create a talent pipeline for our global network of contributors. Organizations who post job openings get credit for this as part of our Badges. Post a Job Opening →

OpenMRS is built to support national digital health strategies, not replace them. We work closely with Ministries of Health, Digital Health Units, and public health leaders to ensure OpenMRS strengthens national health information systems, supports interoperability, and aligns with country priorities.

Whether you’re evaluating EMR options, scaling an existing deployment, or planning long-term digital transformation, we’d be glad to connect. Our team can walk you through how OpenMRS fits into enterprise architectures, how countries govern and customize their implementations, and how partners can support sustainable national rollouts.

Contact us at community@openmrs.org to discuss your national digital health goals.

If you excel at organizing work, translating user needs into clear requirements, or ensuring software meets quality standards, we need you! Use your skills to ensure that what we build truly meets the needs of the health systems we serve.

You can support requirement gathering, coordinate community squads, help define user stories, host issue-review sessions, or participate in regular QA cycles for the OpenMRS community EMR.

Help with QA Testing: This is a great way to familiarize yourself with our EMR, and we are always looking for people to help us regularly explore the application, check for bugs, and identify room for improvement!

• Explore our QA Guide. These have use-cases for you to try testing, as well as guidance you can follow to grow your Quality Assurance thinking. Review our Step-By-Step Manual QA Guide for OpenMRS →
• Start playing with the application! Go to our testing site at test3.openmrs.org and use u:admin  p:Admin123
• When you’re ready to start logging bugs: Sign up for an OpenMRS member ID here. Then post to our Community Forum, “OpenMRS Talk”, and let us know you’re interested in joining our Community Manual Testing team! Apply for access to our Issue Tracker (Jira), so you can file any bugs you find. 🐞
• Join others in scheduled pre-release testing: We try to release the OpenMRS EMR every 1-2 months, with a dedicated week of manual checks in our test environment (test3.openmrs.org) before the release. Check the community calendar for upcoming QA team calls, and the #o3-releases channel on Slack for release coordination.

Listen-In: A great way to get started is to join our weekly Squads’ Call to listen-in about what features are currently being worked on, and which ones seem to require more help. Check the community calendar for the latest weekly call timing →

Look at the “Active and Available Projects” list: This list will show you what features are of particular interest to the community, either immediately (“Now”) or which are looking for someone to help push them forwards (“Next”). See the Community Projects page →

Write up Requirements: Once you are familiar with the application, and after learning about active projects and squads, you will likely now know where your knowledge can be most helpful. Use the Requirements Template to help a team, squad, or not-yet-ready feature get the information they need! See the Requirements Template → (be sure to click the dropdown “BA’s or Feature Leader’s Checklist” for steps we recommend you take)

Designers play a crucial role in building an EMR that clinicians actually enjoy using. We follow a shared UX system that includes the OpenMRS Styleguide, common design patterns, and the Carbon Design System — so we’re not looking for major redesigns, but for designers who want to contribute to user research, usability testing, workflow exploration, and polished UI mockups. We have a clear onboarding path for designers, and you can browse our list of “available projects” to find UX and UI tasks that match your interests.

Learn our design conventions: Visit our Designer Onboarding Guide →

Listen-In: A great way to get started is to join our weekly Squads’ Call to listen-in about what features are currently being worked on or are emerging, and which ones seem to need help. Check the community calendar for the latest weekly call timing →

Look at the “Active and Available Projects” list: This list will show you what features are of particular interest to the community, either immediately (“Now”) or which are looking for someone to help push them forwards (“Next”). See the Community Projects page →

Writers help bring clarity to the OpenMRS community — whether that’s documenting how to use the software, writing implementation guides, improving README files, or creating blog stories about community impact.

We welcome both technical writers and narrative storytellers. If you love explaining complex topics or highlighting real-world success stories, there’s a place for you here.

First, Listen-In: A great way to get started is to join our weekly Squads’ Call to listen-in about what features are currently being worked on or are emerging. This will give you ideas about which teams might love help with documentation, or interesting initiatives you could write about. Check the community calendar for the latest weekly call timing →

Then:

• Pitch or write Blog Articles: Pitch or share a blog article idea on Talk →

• Technical Documentation: Help improve our technical documentation on the Wiki or in README files. You can either work with a Squad directly, or feel free to work on a Wiki or README of your choice after identifying a page you think could be improved. The Getting Started page explains how to request Wiki edit access →

• Documentation Projects: Look for documentation projects →

OpenMRS has a big impact with a remarkably small budget, at a very low cost-per-beneficiary. Because we do not compete with implementers or charge for our software, OpenMRS Inc. relies entirely on grants and donations to support the global community — enabling collaboration, governance, security reviews, product leadership, and critical shared infrastructure. Staying a neutral party that does not compete with our own community is what has allowed OpenMRS to be sustainable and community-driven for 20+ years.

OpenMRS, Inc. is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Financial contributions to OpenMRS Inc. are tax-deductible.

If you’re passionate about improving global health systems, your support can directly accelerate our work and expand access to high-quality digital tools in low-resource settings.

See our Impact Metrics: To see the real-world impact of contributions at om.rs/impact →

Contact us: We’d be delighted to speak with you about where support is most needed and how it can advance safe, scalable digital health in LMICs. Please reach out to share your philanthropic interests by contacting grants@openmrs.org.

Researchers help quantify the impact of OpenMRS and explore new ways to strengthen digital health systems. Whether you work in informatics, population health, implementation science, open source security, or health systems research, you’ll find valuable opportunities for collaboration.

Known Articles: There are over 4,000 publications involving OpenMRS. We have a sample of articles of interest on our wiki: Explore published research at om.rs/evidence →

Collaborate and share your work or research ideas: If you’re interested in evaluating OpenMRS, conducting implementation research, or exploring partnerships, our community will likely be excited to collaborate. Share your interest or research project on our community forum →

Connect your OpenMRS data to researcher tools: OpenMRS supports a variety of tools that support secondary use of data — including our OHDSI/OMOP integration for advanced analytics and cohort studies. Learn about our OMOP/OHDSI analytics tools →