FreeMedForms is a free EMR (Electronic medical records) originated from France and released as an open-source project.It works on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.
The project is in a stable state now, and being downloaded and used all over the world, especially as it supports multiple installation modes including single install which makes it ideal for general practitioner (GP) computers.
FreeMedForms Features
Multiple installation options
FreeMedForms developers give the user multiple installation options as a standalone installation, client or server, with MySQL support or without. Soon, as it's installed, there are different working layouts to fit certain practice. However, installation and configuration may require certain IT skills and knowledge, even though it looks simple and smooth. FreeMedForm developers recommend the users to use MySQL database even for a single installation, It's a warning message more or less to make sure the data store is kept safe in case of system or software crash.
Simple easy-to-use interface
The interface is user-friendly and easy, It's easy to add a new patient, search for current records with multiple fields filtering options, The sidebar makes it quick to access the main features of the program. Though, It may look a bit complicated when it comes to settings, configurations, templates, and plugins.
Patient records management
Patient records management is features-rich implementation within FreeMedEMR, However, it's quite crowded, but yet organized and easy to browse, add, modify and search.
More features
- Multi-languages ( English, French, & Dutch)
- Templates
- Plugins
- Socio-demographic data
- User management
FreeMedForms developers have released a set of software for doctors and pharmacists including FreeDiams: a Pharmaceutical drug prescriber (with ATC management, Drug-Drug interaction), FreeDDIManager: pharmaceutical drugs' database manager, Though the target audience with support for its French users.
Considerations
- Agenda does not seem to work on my install
- Installation on Mac OS X was not smooth as expected as there is not enough documentation, and it does not follow Mac conventional installation for other software, but with some trial and error, it works at the end.
- Complex Workflow, It's simple software but with a bit complex workflow, makes the patient record more crowded with empty fields with no options to simplify it.
- There is not enough documentation or tutorials, neither enough international support, most of the issues and documentation are in French.
- I kept getting an error message on Mac OSX, symlink error to the application folder, though I managed to make it work at the end.
- The Agenda feature was disabled in most of my installs on Mac OSX, hopefully, it'll work on Windows and Linux, as I plan to install and test the application on both platforms.
- The countries select field in the patient form is listing all countries, which is not practical, considering most of the patients will be from the same country where the doctor usually works.
- Build instruction page for the source code is returning to " This page does not exist" or 404 error, " Cette page n'existe pas encore ", There is not enough developer documentation.
Support.
Though the program is free and open source, the support is mainly a membership-based and in French mostly, There is not enough information about extending the support to other countries with the website is still quite limited in its English edition, However, The membership requires a donation, but will comes with many support options as installation support, portal preconfigured with FreeMedForms USB stick, emergency repair, and access to the packages (plugins) servers.