The project’s goal is to make the existing openIMIS mobile applications (Policies management and Claims management) shelf-ready, by making them rely fully on openHIE standards, safe against data breaches and interoperable according to open source standards such as FHIR. Bluesquare will join forces of its Android development resources and its thorough knowledge of openIMIS and open source technologies to successfully upgrade these mobile applications.
The project’s goals is to make the existing openIMIS Policies and Claims mobile applications safer, fully openHIE standards compatible and interoperable shelf-ready solutions, hence boosting their adoption and use in different LMICs contexts where internet connectivity is unreliable. Bluesquare has a very precise knowledge of openIMIS and has also worked on improving the mobile applications in the context of an openIMIS implementation in Niger. Goals will be achieved by dedicating part of its Android software development workforce to this project, while staying in close touch with the openIMIS implementers and developers communities in order to best answer end-users needs.
Seeking collaboration
Possible collaboration (in discussion): Mannheim university Computer Science students
It has been discussed with the GIZ, who is leading the openIMIS initiative, that Mannheim Computer Science university students could help rewrite the openIMIS mobile applications. Bluesquare proposes that in the framework of this project a collaboration could start with them.
Today two openIMIS mobile applications exist: one for Policies management and another for Claims management. Even though they are both functional, their source code still uses non open source technologies and neither of them received security updates or a significant update since 2018. So far only a few LMICs have chosen to implement the openIMIS mobile applications, but there is a growing demand (last ones were Niger and Mauritania), especially in contexts with unreliable internet connectivity, as mobile applications allow an offline use. The fact that they were not developed on fully open source technologies and compatible with openHIE standards creates challenges for a perfect interoperability with other existing open source digital health tools. Also, these applications enable management of health-related sensitive information, hence the need to make them compliant with the latest data protection standards.
The project aim will be to rewrite the mobile application code, in order to make it completely open source and aligned as much as possible with openHIE, safer against data breaches and fully interoperable with open source standards, such as FHIR.
Overall objective: rewriting openIMIS mobile applications so they are shelf-ready fully open source tools
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Rewrite the openIMIS mobile applications (Policies management and Claims management), making them compatible with openHIE standards
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Upgrade openIMIS mobile applications safety standards against data breaches
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Make openIMIS mobile applications interoperable according to open source standards such as FHIR
Comments
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Thank you for the concept
Thank you for the concept note. For the full technical application, in addition to general recommendations per the email, please include more on the intended use of the application (e.g., does this includes a self-management app for the insurees?, which modules would be included in the app?, etc.).