OpenEyes expands capabilities with new modules

Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has added three new modules to OpenEyes, its open source electronic patient record system. The new modules deal with note taking, the creation of discharge letters and prescriptions for patients. According to the hospital, other modules currently in development are for pre-operative assessment, auditing and research purposes in many areas of the trust.

The three new modules allow surgeons to take surgical notes electronically (including diagrams and pictures) and should make it easier to create discharge letters for patients. These will be automatically pre-populated with the patient's surgical and post-operative history as well as information on prescriptions. The system can now also issue prescriptions for patients and the developers plan to integrate this with a pharmacy module that is in development.

OpenEyes was rolled out last year following an earlier pilot trial at the London hospital. Moorfields had originally started to develop the open source solution in-house because commercial alternatives could not provide a satisfactory system. Since the project's conception, ophthalmic units in several other UK hospitals have started supporting its development. In the development and testing of the new modules, the developers were assisted by 40 clinicians from other hospitals.

The source code for OpenEyes is available from GitHub under a GPLv3 licence. Documentation for the different parts of the system can also be found on the project's web site.

(fab)