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Electronic Medical Records (EMR) , Electronic Health Records (EHR), and Hospital Information system are the basic classifications for clinical and healthcare facilities management application, Over the past +20 years, many developers favored PHP to release their open source EMR, EHR and HIS. PHP as a powerful web programming language was and still the cornerstone of web development for years.
We have decided to list the PHP based EMR, EHR and HIS open source solutions here in order to make it easy for users, hospital managers to find, test and try them out and ease their decision.
Why PHP?
PHP is a powerful web programming language, It has been used in powerful projects like Facebook, Wikipedia, Yahoo search engine & directory, Baidu Search Engine, Tumblr, SourceForge and many more. It was also used to develop Wordpress the CMS/ Blog which powers a large portion of the internet websites. There are many powerful PHP frameworks like PHPCake, CodeIgniter, Larval, Symphony, and Yii.
PHP developers tend to use very simple flow installing and configuring their web applications, which makes it easy to install on web servers, network, or local machine. The developers are favoring MySQL/ MariaDB for their backend which is easy to install, configure, manage and backup.
Advantages of cloud-based EMR/EHR & HIS
- Centralized management and Multiple peripherals
- Web browsers as clients
- Simple backup and management
- Multi-users support
Consideration of cloud-based EMR/ EHR and HIS
Offline-first support: When there is no network or internet connection regarding the installation (network or internet-based server), The system will not work, though in the last 10 years many developers start using the browsers local storage database to support smooth offline workflow. Unfortunately, there is only one solution in this list that supports offline workflow and synchronize the data soon as the connection restored ( THIRAA portal EMR ). However, There is another one we didn't list here as it does not use PHP that has a powerful offline-first feature which is HospitalRun HIS, It uses NodeJS and several browser modules to achieve that.
1 - OpenEMR: ONC certified open source EMR
OpenEMR is an open source self-hosted EMR. OpenEMR is our first and top pick in this list, It has been there for years and proven by many clients.
OpenEMR is a fully functional EMR solution with clean usable user-interface. It comes with patient records management, scheduling and appointment management, e-Prescribing, Laboratory integration, and Multi-lingual support.
The reasons why we picked OpenEMR as our first choice are: It's HIPAA-ready, ONC certified and has many companies providing commercial support and implementations. Above all of that, it's packed by OEMR a non-profit organization that supports the OpenEMR project.
Status: active
- OpenEMR website
2 - LibreHealth EHR
LibreHealth started as a fork of OpenEMR, but it went into another direction aiming to provide a platform to build enterprise-grade EHR solutions over their modular structure. It provides users with RESTful API ( LibreHealth Toolkit API ) and rich documentation.
The team behind LibreHealth EHR has released special edition developed for Radiology centers: LibreRadiology.
LibreHealth EHR is licensed under MPL v2.0 ( Mozilla Public License Version 2) .src. The code inherited from OpenEMR is licensed under GPL 2 or higher.
Status: active
LibreHealth website
3 - Nosh EMR: Medical Charting EMR system
Nosh EMR is a features rich charting EMR system, built by a doctor (Michael Chen, MD.) who realizes the need for such a tool in the sector. NoshEMR provides a completely alternative charting solution for patient records, It has a quick access feature and a powerful search tool with multiple options. NoshEMR is packed with a patient's portal to help the patient keep track of their records, lab results, notifications, and alerts.
Status: active
Nosh EMR website
4 - GaiaEHR
GaiaEHR(Electronic Health Records) is an Open source Web-Based Software, built using PHP and MySQL. GaiaEHR provides the user with several modules including medical records management, patient management, appointment management, billing, and stock management. GaiaEHR comes with powerful multi-type users administration all backed in clean user-interface.
GaiaEHR's Website:
Status: last update 2016
5 - THIRRA EHR Portable EMR for Rural and Remote Areas.
THIRRA is the only EMR on this list that was built with a PHP framework: CodeIgniter, a powerful PHP framework, but it uses PostgreSQL (pgsql) instead of MySQL as the other projects in this list.
THIRRA supports offline mobile which comes handy when there is no internet connection. It provides complete EHR modules and Biosurveillance module for infectious diseases investigations.
Status: last update 2017
THIRRA's Download
6 - Chikista EMR
Chikista is a free open source modular EMR solution, was built to manage small clinics and hospitals. Chikista has a responsive design which works on mobile and tablets. It provides complete patient management, multi-user management including permission groups, stock/ inventory management, medication management, and reporting options.
ChikistaEMR comes with other powerful features and extensions as well, some of them are listed as paid extensions in Chikista marketplace.
7 - ElixirAid HIS: PHP based Hospital Information system (HIS)
ElixirAid is a cloud-based hospital information management system, ElixirAid was built to manage small and medium-sized hospitals, It focuses on multi-user management, stock management, billing, and department management. It has also a staff management, laboratory management, and doctors list manager.
ElixirAIR has clean block ready modular user-interface which supports mobile and tablets with responsive options. We have listed ElixirAID in our top list of open-source Hospital Information Systems (HIS).
Status: active, last update ( 2016 )
- ElixirAID HIS website
8 - DoliMed EMR: ERP based EMR
DoliMed EMR was built on top of a famous PHP based ERP solution: Dolibarr ERP & CRM, both of them were released as open source projects. Doliparr has a very rich ecosystem including marketplace, SaaS service, and cloud implementation services.
Status: active
9 - MedinTux EMR
MedinTux EMR is a french based open source project, It provides a set of unique features that facilitate the clinical workflow. Some of its interested features we didn't see in the other projects is Google Calendar integration, Text prediction. Though, MedinTux EMR requires more effort and features to put it on the global scale as Language support.
MedinTux is built with PHP and uses MySQL as the backend.
Status: active
Consideration:
- Limited English support
MedinTux EMR website
10 - OpenClinic EMR
OpenClinic EMR is a simple EMR solution, It provides patients records management, search functionality, clinical history listing, and system configuration including database backup and users management.
OpenClinic is easy to install and manage. OpenClinic's latest release supports PHP5.0 and > MySQL 5.0. The old versions are still available for legacy PHP/ and MySQL versions.
Status: has not been updated since 2013
OpenClinic EMR website
11 - Remote Clinic
RemoteClinic is an open source built to manage clinics remotely, The system has many impressive features, though it is missing many features to make it usable as an EMR solution. However, It's still work in progress and provides many useful features to manage clinics remotely as clinics management, multi-user support, notifications, logging and activity reporting.
Status: active.
12- Care2X (Discontinued)
Care2X is an open source complete hospital integrated solution, Sadly, the project has not been in development for years, but it still there. You may ready about Care2X features and the call in this article
Status: inactive.
13- Ispirithalaya open source HIS (Hospital Information System)
Ispirithalaya system has e channeling, checking , lab test, reservation. It is written by zend php framework and mysql db. doctors and patients can log the system and chat. It has payment gateway integration.