Introducing OpenMRS 2

Our community is excited to announce OpenMRS 2. This is quite a milestone for us, and we’d like to explain what it means:

• We’re more than just a platform. OpenMRS 2 brings a new focus to OpenMRS. Instead of just releasing a generic enterprise-grade platform and leaving it up to each implementation to configure, OpenMRS 2 includes more functionality “out of the box” that should help you be more productive, faster.
• Patient Summary view for clinicians.
• Visit view for data clerks.
• Vital Signs capture, including support for a standalone vitals workstation.
• Diagnosis capture, supporting coded/non-coded, confirmed/presumed, and primary/secondary diagnoses.
• Outpatient vs. Inpatient statuses.
• Multiple wards/services in a facility.

What hasn’t changed: OpenMRS 2 is still built on our familiar Platform, including our API and REST web services. We’re building on a decade of experience and effort from around the world to make sure our software is reliable and has a wide and deep support system.

What HAS changed: OpenMRS 2 features a completely new and modern user interface, built from scratch to be much more user friendly. Our new UI is still in its early days, so you may find some missing features. We will be continually improving the UI with your help and feedback. For example: in OpenMRS 2, we’ll let you add your own forms without having to write a module and we’ll include some pre-built reports along with an ad-hoc query tool. But we think it’s important to show the direction OpenMRS is moving, so current and future implementations can start planning around these changes. For more information on upcoming features, see the Road Map wiki page for OpenMRS 2.

You can download OpenMRS 2 from our downloads page using one of these options:

• OpenMRS 2.x Standalone, recommended for new people exploring OpenMRS. A self-contained ZIP archive that includes an embedded database and application server, as well the option to install demo data, so you can quickly test out the new system.
• OpenMRS Platform WAR package and a OpenMRS 2 Modules ZIP archive, for upgrading an existing implementation to OpenMRS 2, or for mixing and matching modules.

Please visit our implementer documentation to learn more about how to setup and use OpenMRS 2.

Cheers,
Darius Jazayeri

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Additional OpenMRS 2 Technical Details:

• Everything is built using reusable components on top of our new App Framework module that lets you build small “apps” using multiple technologies, including the OpenMRS UI Framework, HTML+JavaScript+REST, and the more traditional traditional Spring MVC.
• A higher-level, more opinionated EMR-related APIs in the EMR API module, and a new “encountertransaction” REST web service that lets clients build an encounter in real-time, by making multiple submissions, with improved semantics.
• A core set of configurable apps in the Core Apps module.
• A reference set of concepts, encounter types, etc in the Reference Metadata module.

You can leverage some or all of these technologies to build your own OpenMRS distribution. Learn more about developing for OpenMRS 2.
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