In developed countries, healthcare workers represent a significant proportion of the working population. For example, in the United Kingdom, more than 1 million people work for the National Health Service, a publicly funded healthcare system. Medical software therefore has a huge market to tap. Whatever stage of a country’s economic development, health care is one of the most important elements in society.
This article focuses on software that provides Electronic Medical Records (EMR) functionality. This type of record is used in a hospital and doctor’s surgery to capture medical information, reducing the amount of physical records, and the costs associated in storing them. EMR software can make an appreciable difference to improve a medical organisation’s efficiency and raise quality standards. For example, it reduces storage costs, minimises medical errors, provides statistical reporting, and assists clinical studies.
Open source EMR software has an important role to play. In a resource poor country, commercial healthcare computer software may simply not be affordable. Alternatively, developed countries can make significant savings in IT costs by using an open source EMR system without compromising on patient care.
To provide in insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 6 high quality open source EMR software. Here’s our rating for each program.
Click the links in the table below to learn more about each application.
| Electronic Medical Records Software | |
|---|---|
| OpenEMR | Open source replacement for Medical Manager, Health Pro, and Misys |
| OpenMRS | Designed to be usable in very resource poor environments |
| GNU Health | Health and hospital information system |
| GNUmed | Medical practice management |
| FreeMED | EMR system and practive administration |
| PatientOS | Healthcare Information System for small hospitals and clinics |
This article has been revamped in line with our recent announcement.
 Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. |