OpenHIM

OpenHIM

The OpenHIM is a middleware component designed to ease interoperability between disparate information systems. It provides secure communications and data governance as well as support for routing, orchestrating and translating requests as they flow between systems.

Approach

The OpenHIM is a general-purpose enterprise service bus middleware application primarily focused on health information exchange solutions in low-resource settings. It is a reference implementation of the interoperability layer of the Open Health Information Exchange (OpenHIE).

Implementations

Jembi has implemented the OpenHIM in several countries in Africa, including Rwanda (Rwanda Health Information Exchange), South Africa (MomConnect), Ethiopia (Ethiopian Public Health Institute) and internationally (DATIM). There is anecdotal evidence of OpenHIM being used in several other African countries.

The OpenHIM is also a core component of OpenCRVS.

Resources

• Website: http://openhim.org/
• Documentation: https://discourse.ohie.org/#openhim
• Source Code: https://github.com/jembi/openhim-core-js
• Articles:
  • Crichton Ryan, Moodley Deshendran, Pillay Anban, Gakuba Richard, Seebregts, Christopher J. An Architecture and Reference Implementation of an Open Health Information Mediator: Enabling Interoperability in the Rwandan Health Information Exchange in Foundations of Health Information Engineering and Systems (Weber Jens, Perseil Isabelle. , eds.); 7789 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science: 87-104. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2013.
  • Seebregts CJ, Pillay A, Crichton R, Singh S, and Moodley D. Enterprise Architectures for Digital Health in Global Health Informatics to Improve Quality of Care, Editors: Celi LA, Fraser HS, Nikore V, Osorio JS, Paik K. MIT Press 2016 in press
  • Seebregts CJ, Benjamin P, Tanna, G and Barron P. MomConnect: an exemplar national mobile maternal health implementation in South Africa (2016). South African Health Review, 2016, 125-136.
  • Christopher Seebregts, Pierre Dane, Annie Neo Parsons, Thomas Fogwill, Debbie Rogers, Marcha Bekker, Vincent Shaw, Peter Barron. Designing for scale: optimising the health information system architecture for mobile maternal health messaging in South Africa (MomConnect). BMJ global health, 3 (Suppl 2), e000563
  • http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2017-000563