Open-source electronic health record systems: A systematic review of most recent advances

Abstract

Open-source Electronic Health Records (OS-EHRs) are of pivotal importance in the management, operations, and administration of any healthcare organization. With the advancement of health informatics, researchers and healthcare practitioners have proposed various frameworks to assess the maturation of Open-source EHRs. The significance of OS-EHRs stems from the fact that vendor-based EHR implementations are becoming financially burdensome, with some vendors raking in more than $1 billion with one contract. Contrarily, the adoption of OS-EHRs suffers from a lack of systematic evaluation from the standpoint of a standard reference model. To this end, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) has presented a strategic road map called EMR Adoption and Maturity (EMRAM). The HIMSS-EMRAM model proposes a stage-wise model approach that is globally recognized and can be essentially applied as a benchmark evaluation criteria for open-source EHRs. This paper offers an applied descriptive methodology over the frequently studied open-source EHRs currently operational worldwide or has the potential of adoption in healthcare settings. Besides, we also present profiling (User Support, Developer’ Support, Customization Support, Technical details, and Diagnostic help) of studied OS-EHRs from developer’s and user’s perspectives using updated standard metrics. We carried out multi-aspect objective analysis of studied systems covering EHR functions, software based features and implementation. This review portrays systematic aspects of electronic medical record standards for open-source software implementations. As we observed in the literature, prevalent research and working prototypes lack systematic review of the HIMSS-EMRAM model and do not present evolving software features. Therefore, after the application of our assessment measures, the results obtained indicate that OS-EHRs are yet to acquire standard compliance and implementation. The findings in this paper can be beneficial in the planning and implementation of OS-EHRs projects in the future.