OpenMRS is an open source medical records system. I was first introduced to the OpenMRS by one of the brothers who taught me about Google summer of code, Mr. Nirmal Fernando. Thats back in the 2011. Well now its 2016 and i think i have came upon long way with this open source project. Its nearly 5 years. wow! I am really glad that i found this amazing open source project which tries to solve healthcare information technology related issues and ultimately helps for a worthy cause. This open source project is a massive community consist with doctors, healthcare workers, professors, Software engineers, Software architects and HealthIT professionals.

Since its 5 years and i thought its the high time to retrospect about my involvement with the project so far. So first let me list down my OpenMRS related milestones to-date.
  • Introduction to OpenMRS in late 2011 - Sinhalese localization & bug fixes.
  • Became Google summer of code student on 2012
  • Participated OpenMRS implementers conference in Manila, Philippines.
  • Became Google summer of code student on 2013
  • Participated FOSSASIA 2013 conference and gave a talk on OpenMRS at Phnom Penn, Cambodia.
  • Participated FOSSASIA 2014 conference and gave a talk on OpenMRS at NUS, Singapore.
  • Became Google code in mentor in 2014
  • Proud to became one of the best Google code-in mentors & got a wonderful opportunity to represent OpenMRS at Google HQ, mountain view.
  • Became Google summer of code mentor in 2015 

And yes, OpenMRS world summit 2015 is the latest & i am really glad i have participated for it.
Despite of my physical illness which i got infected in the last 2 days, I really enjoyed the every bit of it.


Event was very well organized by the OpenMRS staff. Singapore management university was a really good venue. So much easy access to the venue with convenient transportation by MRT which is also quite cheap. I really don't want to mention much about the food because i don't like Chinese like food much which are very popular in SG, but there's a city called 'little india' for south asians like us to consume much tastier food similar to the ones we have in home countries. :) Singapore is a very nice country consist with very interesting places to visit. Marina bay sands was one of my favorite places in SG. And cannot forget other cool places such as gardens by the bay & Senthosa island.





Sessions on the summit was great.

  • Cloud Computing for OpenMRS Data Analysis
  • Project Buendia: In-Depth
  • Project Bahmini & how indian folks tries to solve the healthIT related problems in india.
were few of my favorite talks in the summit. I really loved the way Bahmini tries to solve the health related problems in india but we being Sri Lankans (very near country to india) still don't use proper healthcare IT software for our government hospitals. 


Audience -- well our community.

There were lots of people around the world participated to the summit. Proving that Sri Lankans are everywhere in world doing cool stuff -- I met Harsha Kumara who is an another former GSoC student & current mentor from Sri Lanka (actually we were sharing the same room to save some money from our lodging cost for OpenMRS.) And after few years met my old friend and a brother Suranga Kasthurirathne, who departed to US for his Phd in Healthcare informatics. He seems to be doing really great with OpenMRS as a staff member now and wish him good luck with his future studies. Luckily we also met a doctor from Sri Lanka who was also very enthusiastic about OpenMRS and having an idea to implement it in Sri Lanka. We had a slight chat with Dr. Paul Biondich & discussed about how to get this thing done.


From Left: HarshaK, Me, Dr. Paul, Doctor from SL, Dr. Burke, Another gentleman -- really sorry i don't remember the name of him.

From left: Me, HarshaK, MayankS


I also met Mayank Sharma who was introduced to OpenMRS last year by me & downey at the FOSSASIA summit in Singapore. Looking at his work now, we are really glad that we found him. He really does a great job to OpenMRS being a Branch manager now. Kaweesi Joseph was one of my cyber friends at OpenMRS since 2012 but we never had meet in-person. I am really glad we met at the summit. He is a really cool guy, started as a student and doing a massive job to the project now. Jordan is still a cool girl, i met her back in the days (2012) at Philippines summit and glad to meet her back.

From left: Me, MayankS



From left: HarshaK, Me, DanielK


Ever supporting mentor Daniel Kayiwa, I am glad to meet him back in the summit. There were numerous people i met in the summit including. Dr. Burke, Wyclif, Dr. Andrew, Pascal, Ellen, Robby, Maurya and many of others. I am really glad to be part of this amazing community consist with great brains.

Team getting ready for lightning talks


In lightning talks event, I have a done a brief speech to the participants on "OpenMRS iOS Client" From the responses i got i think quite a lot of people liked the project and the idea. 
 

The OpenMRS worldwide summit 2015 was a great experience and i really appreciate OpenMRS LLC for sponsoring me with a travel grant. It really was a invaluable experience to gain knowledge on healthcare informatics.



Mentioning about my future plans with OpenMRS project, I always wanted to contribute OpenMRS whenever i can. These days i'm quite busy with my masters thesis and my day job as usual. I hope i could do more things and contribute OpenMRS in the months to come. So this is not the end of my engagement with this wonderful open source project and hopefully it should be a life long journey!

"Write Code, Save Lives" - Join with OpenMRS.

Thank you,
Harsha