ThoughtWorks' Bahmni Helps Small, Low-Cost Hospitals Improve Patient Care

A home-grown open source software that can revolutionise treatment process in rural clinics

Hundreds of patients at the Jan Swasthya Sahyog (JSS) hospital in Chhattisgarh’s Bilaspur used to spend hours carrying documents to different windows. ThoughtWorks’ Bahmni, an open source medical record system, has attempted to put an end to that. The open source software platform was developed by engineers of software firm ThoughtWorks in Bengaluru and Hyderabad to help doctors keep medical records, lab reports and other related information and treat their patients better.

The objective of Bahmni is to enable effective care and better performance through automation at hospitals and clinics, especially at low-resource places. ThoughtWorks said the idea behind developing a software such as Bahmni was to provide a better medical information system to thousands of rural patients. Bahmni has been already been implemented in four small hospitals in India, two in Nepal and two in Bangladesh. Implementation is in progress in 25 other locations across the world.

“Most of rural India does not have a medical record system. The challenge was to help doctors by building a system and saving 10 minutes or half an hour and that potentially means saving lives. Bahmni, a combination of OpenMRS (medical record system),  an open ERP and open lab information, was developed to help doctors take decisions faster with data of patients,” Sudhir Tiwari, Managing Director, ThoughtWorks India, told Business Standard in an interview...