The goal of this page is to help you understand what it takes to implement OpenMRS. If you are already beginning an implementation and would like more detailed advice, see the Field Guide.

Staff Requirements

Primary implementer

Skills needed

• One dedicated IT person for at least two or three months, usually full time. They need to know the whole stack (server maintenance, MySQL, Tomcat, Java, etc.) The level of expertise you need on site depends in part on whether or not you have the Internet to get help from online resources or remote developers.

• Tomcat expertise

  • Install and manage Apache Tomcat

  • Upload and install new WAR files

  • Troubleshoot, read log files

• Database expertise

  • Install and manage MySQL environment

  • Understand the OpenMRS data model

  • Metadata configuration e.g. locations, addresses, patient IDs, programs, relationships. 

  • Understand the capabilities of the module functionality

  • Perform SQL queries and run SQL scripts

• Clinical form design

  • Understand how to create meaningful, useful, and non-ambiguous questions/answers

    • Medical expertise – to understand what questions/answers make sense, what's clinically relevant

    • Technical expertise – to understand how questions/answers can be interpreted by a computer

    • Data management expertise – to understand how questions/answers will be used for reporting, research, etc.

• Concept dictionary design

  • Concept dictionary management – understand the process of creating/modifying new concepts.

  • Ability to infer dictionary concepts from a form (both coded questions and answers), modeling expertise – e.g., do you create