My Django EMR project – Orthopaedic Electronic Medical Record

Hello wandering web surfers,

It has been a long time.. the spider was asleep.Just to announce that long time go when this blog started i had mentioned about designing my own EMR.That is taking shape. I have been quietly at work for about past year and 3 months at it.

Choice of Desktop v/s Web:
Well i went for the web..
Python was the language i know .. at least a little bit.
A little bit of googling suggested Django was the most popular, so i jumped straight in. Initially i did think of trying out wxPython as the base like Gnumed but .. for no specific reason decided on Django. There was however some inspiration as i found at least one project which has used it..

Challenges:
Well, i taught myself Django basics with the tutorials available, but little did i know that the kind of functionality i had in mind requires good knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX etc… not to mention Python.

There were times when i didn’t have time to teach myself all these and thought of switching back to wxPython, but i stuck on and i am now reasonably satisfied.

I had made a Google code project page .. DjangoEMR. This could not be filled up as i had not anticipated the kind of delay.

I thought, rather stupidly that Agile Web development will be faster and i will be up and running in no time. I must say these 20 min blog tutorials are so misleading !

What it is::
Django EMR is a Orthopaedic Small Clinic / Physician EMR.
This can be extended to a multi-doctor practice, though i have not put in any effort on that as the project stands now.
The aim has been to optimize it for personal record keeping.
There also has been no specific attempt to incorporate things like HIPAA / HL-7 standards.. simply because i don’t have time to do that stuff. The aim has always been to create a personal record keeping.
One thing, this is designed as a Orthopaedic software, but with little effort this can be easily extended to other Specialities.

Features:: (most of it done, some of them almost)

• User Registration ( basically built into Django)
• Patient Contact Database
• Admissions ( No Bed management / Medical Orders ).. remember this is not a Hospital Information System
• Physical Examination and Daily Progress notes
• Investigations and Labs result entry
• Discharge Summary Generator
• Detailed Diagnosis and Classification of each patient complaint
• OPD Visit Management ( No Scheduling / Appointments)

Other planned features::

• Physician Dashboard ( No of patients, admissions, events, reminders etc..)
• Calendar
• OPD visits scheduling and Appointments
• OT Booking and Planner

Timeline::
Well, there are some more things i want to finish before i populate my project in Google code.
Stuck with the kind of busy days as i am nowadays really cannot give a time line.
watch this space.

Will i need Help ? ::
Most certainly i would.
Please do let me know here.