Our world continues to be ravaged by a pandemic of epic proportions, as over 40 million people are infected with or dying from HIV/AIDS -- most (up to 95%) are in developing countries. Prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS on this scale requires efficient information management, which is critical as HIV/AIDS care must increasingly be entrusted to less skilled providers. Whether for lack of time, developers, or money, most HIV/AIDS programs in developing countries manage their information with simple spreadsheets or small, poorly designed databases, and if anything at all. To help them, we need to find a way not only to improve management tools but also to reduce unnecessary, duplicative efforts. As a response to these challenges, OpenMRS formed in 2004 as an open-source medical record system framework for developing countries -- a tide that raises all ships.

Over the past decade, OpenMRS has been adapted and used beyond HIV/AIDS for TB, Ebola, maternal-child health, and chronic care. OpenMRS is a multi-institution, nonprofit collaborative led by organizations such as Regenstrief Institute, Inc. (regenstrief.org), a world-renowned leader in medical informatics research, and Partners In Health (pih.org), a Boston-based philanthropic organization with a focus on improving the lives of underprivileged people worldwide through health care service and advocacy. We have also formed a non-profit, OpenMRS, Inc., whose mission is to support the worldwide OpenMRS community. These teams nurture a growing worldwide network of individuals and organizations all focused on creating medical record systems and a corresponding implementation network to allow system development self-reliance within resource-constrained environments. To date, OpenMRS has been implemented in dozens of developing countries, including South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, Lesotho, Uganda, Tanzania, Haiti, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and India.