OpenMRS and Pentaho collaborate on open-source health management

OpenMRS and Pentaho Collaborate to Enhance Open Source Health Management

Community-developed Electronic Medical Record System Teams with Pentaho
to Develop Integrated BI and Data Warehousing Capabilities

Orlando, FL- Aug 21, 2008 - Pentaho, the commercial open source
alternative for business intelligence <http://www.pentaho.com/>  (BI),
and Open Medical Record System (OpenMRS) , a community-developed open
source enterprise electronic medical record system, today announced
collaboration to enhance integration between the OpenMRS system and
Pentaho's open source BI suite <http://www.pentaho.com/products> .   The
integrated system demonstrates the power of the open source model to
deliver real-world impact via community development to address user
populations that are unable to acquire or maintain traditional
proprietary medical records systems due to high software acquisition and
maintenance costs, or the need for highly trained developers.

Open Medical Record System (OpenMRS(r)) formed in 2004 as an open source
medical record system framework that enables the design of  customized
medical records systems with little to no programming knowledge. The
group is focused on supporting developing countries where AIDS,
tuberculosis, and malaria afflict the populations.  Up to 95 percent of
the 40 million people living in developing countries are infected with
or dying from HIV/AIDS. Proper prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS
requires organized dissemination and management of countless patient
details. Traditionally, based on factors like lack of time, developers,
or money, most HIV/AIDS programs in developing countries have managed
information with simple spreadsheets or poorly designed databases or
without any computer technology at all.  OpenMRS and Pentaho have come
together to improve health management tools while reducing unnecessary,
duplicative efforts. Critical information can be handled more
efficiently and effectively, making the care providers better able to
focus efforts on their patients and address their healthcare needs. 

 "We are working hard to grow the OpenMRS community, since we believe
this is the best way to help patients within developing countries
through a robust and extensible medical record system foundation," said
Paul Biondich M.D. and IT Project Lead for OpenMRS. "Pentaho brings
proven open source tools and the right expertise to help reduce the
amount of redundant efforts in collecting, managing, and analyzing
health services information."

Pentaho allows OpenMRS sites to extract and integrate data from the
OpenMRS operational system to enable faster and more complete reporting
<http://www.pentaho.com/products/reporting/>  and analysis
<http://www.pentaho.com/products/analysis/> .  This kind of capability
becomes more and more important as OpenMRS installations throughout the
world scale in size and complexity.  In the current phase, the teams are
working with users and community members to create data extractions and
develop analytical data models with Pentaho Data Integration
<http://www.pentaho.com/products/data_integration/>  which can then be
used for reporting and analysis using Pentaho's popular Mondrian OLAP
<http://mondrian.pentaho.org/>  project.

Community members are invited to help support this important initiative
by providing feedback, or assisting with modeling or other development
tasks. Interested users and contributors can find out more at: 
http://openmrs.org/wiki/Reporting_ETL_and_OLAP_Project
<http://openmrs.org/wiki/Reporting_ETL_and_OLAP_Project> 

"This effort is a perfect example of the difference communities can
make, and a unique opportunity for open source software to help address
a global problem in a new way," said Doug Moran, vice president of
community at Pentaho.  "We look forward to working with the OpenMRS team
and the community to show the benefits that open collaboration can bring
to healthcare providers around the world."


About OpenMRS

OpenMRS is a multi-institution, nonprofit collaborative led by
Regenstrief Institute, Inc. (http://regenstrief.org), a world-renowned
leader in medical informatics research, and Partners In Health
(http://pih.org), a Boston-based philanthropic organization with a focus
on improving the lives of underprivileged people worldwide through
health care service and advocacy. These teams nurture a growing
worldwide network of individuals and organizations all focused on
creating medical record systems and a corresponding implementation
network to allow system development self reliance within resource
constrained environments. To date, OpenMRS has been implemented in
several African countries, including South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda,
Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Uganda, and Tanzania. This work is
supported in part by organizations such as the World Health Organization
(WHO), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), The Rockefeller
Foundation, and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).


About Pentaho Corporation

Pentaho Corporation is the commercial open source alternative for 
Business Intelligence <http://www.pentaho.com/>  (BI). Pentaho Open BI
Suite provides comprehensive reporting
<http://www.pentaho.com/products/reporting/> , OLAP analysis
<http://www.pentaho.com/products/analysis/> , dashboards
<http://www.pentaho.com/products/dashboards/> , data integration
<http://www.pentaho.com/products/data_integration/> , data mining
<http://www.pentaho.com/products/data_mining/>  and a BI platform that
have made it the world's leading and most widely deployed open source BI
suite. Pentaho's commercial open source business model eliminates
software license fees, providing support, services, and product
enhancements via an annual subscription. In the years since Pentaho's
inception as the pioneer in commercial open source BI, Pentaho's
products have been downloaded more than three million times, with
production deployments at companies ranging from small organizations to
The Global 2000. For more information, visit www.pentaho.com
<http://www.pentaho.com/> .

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