OpenMRS comes with the <openmrs> taglib. For the complete list of features see openmrs/webapp/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/taglibs/openmrs.tld. For instance if you want to display a concept you write:
<openmrs:format concept="${concept}" caseConversion="global"/>
(OpenMRS 1.10+) caseConversion="global" indicates that the output should be converted to lowercase, uppercase or capitalized depending on the dashboard.metadata.caseConversion global property. Allowed values for caseConversion are global, lowercase, uppercase, capitalize or "" (empty, no conversion).