Students who worked with me in the Cancer Institute, Maharagama projects wanted to do their final year project on Health Information Systems in 2013. Since groups size was smaller than the 2nd year project groups, only four students were keen to develop a Hospital management Software for government hospitals of Sri Lanka.

Three students, Miyuru Madhawa de Silva, Imanka Kodithuwakku and Rusiru Perera with one new student Vishwa Jayadewa wanted to develop a “SOA Powered Software Framework for a Stable Health Information System”. We decided to work on this topic since we were not satisfied with the systems we had at that era. We came to know that there is a Hospital Health Information Management System developed with the help of ICTA running at Dompe District Hospital and a few other places. At the same time we got to know about OpenMRS. We inquired which one is best suited for Sri Lankan context. This went into a medical forum through Prof. Vajira Dissanayake. One of his students, Dr. Roshan Hewapathirana, who was doing a PhD in Health Informatics in University of Oslo clarified HHIMS is based on the Sri Lankan care pathway and fits into local needs.

Then we thought of studying HHIMS. We inquired about the source code of that software to develop something on top of that, but it was not available to us. We had long email conversations with ICTA and Dr. Denham Pole, who was in the process of developing that software, but unable to locate an architectural design of it and even the code, even though it is described as an Open Source software.

We were introduced to Dr. Sampath Kulathilaka, a leading medical officer who was working at eDompe Hospital project by ICTA warmly welcomed us at eDompe Hospital and explained us the clinical protocols and process flows in Hospital patient management. He extended his fullest support to us with two other gentlemen Mr. Shriyananda Rathnayake and Dr. Indika Jagoda. This trio was in continuous touch to help us to understand the problem domain. There were four student groups lead by Mr. Miyuru Madhawa de Silva (SOA powered software Ms. Umayangani Dahanayake (developing hospital process maps using Bizagi) , Ms. Nalini Galmangoda (developing in ward system for Renal Transplant Unit, NHSL) , Mr. Gihan Kaushalya (studying usability of HHIMS).

Few photos taken at our first visit to eDompe reminds us how we developed our knowledge on Hospital process flows.