As an open-source medical record system, OpenMRS is on a journey of constant improvement, always striving to provide healthcare professionals with the best user experience possible. With their comfort in mind, SolDevelo recently partnered with MSF and Madiro to deliver a more intuitive view for patient encounter reviews.

What made this initiative truly special was that it was developed in close alignment with the OpenMRS community. Every step of the process – from planning to implementation – was discussed and reviewed collaboratively to ensure the final solution met community standards and real user needs.

The challenge: Unreadable Patient Summary

Up until recently, healthcare professionals who wished to review patient encounter form results, needed to painstakingly go through an unordered list of key-value pairs.

This imperfect view resulted in users having to invest more time and effort to read and understand the key information on their patients.  

The solution: Embedding the O3 form view

The goal was to make patient review more readable. To achieve that, we’ve decided to embed the original form layout directly into the page. The information is now presented in a more clear manner that preserves field order, grouping, and labels – making the summary much easier to follow for clinicians.

Flexible view

Users can switch between the legacy key-value list and the new embedded summary according to their preferences. 

To further improve visibility, we’ve added an option to hide unanswered fields in read-only view. This reduces clutter and makes summaries easier to read.

Increased clarity

We’ve refined the Form Engine to make data presentation clearer and more intuitive:

• Interactive elements are now removed in read-only mode to prevent confusion.
• Expressions that evaluate to 0 are now correctly displayed, ensuring meaningful zero values are visible while null or undefined results remain hidden.

Supporting healthcare in every detail

These improvements go beyond visual polish – they directly impact the daily work of healthcare professionals. By making patient summaries clearer, better structured, and easier to read, clinicians can focus on understanding their patients’ conditions and making informed decisions quickly. The visual consistency with the original form layout enhances trust and ensures the information feels well-organized.

The added flexibility to switch views and hide unnecessary information ensures that each user can tailor the interface to their workflow, reducing cognitive load and time spent navigating data.

Built together with the OpenMRS community

One of the most valuable aspects of this project was the way it was developed – in full collaboration with the OpenMRS community. We consulted every major step, followed official review processes, and maintained transparent communication throughout. The final solution fully adheres to OpenMRS standards and addresses community-identified needs.

This open and collaborative approach ensured the project’s long-term sustainability and visibility as a shared contribution from SolDevelo and MSF. It also delivered greater value to the client – not only through a technical improvement but through a solution that strengthens and supports the broader OpenMRS ecosystem.

The journey continues

With these updates, OpenMRS continues to evolve into a more intuitive, efficient, and clinician-friendly system – empowering healthcare providers to deliver better care with greater confidence.

Empower your healthcare delivery with OpenMRS. Contact us to learn more →