Capturing Observations

About the Feature

The Observations tab in the clinical module in Bahmni is a tab in the clinical consultation where clinicians can capture clinical observations for patients. The different forms used in different departments and sections by different providers in a hospital can be setup here as individual forms. Examples of such may be surgery, vitals, intake-output, delivery, gynecology, ANC, diabetes etc. Bahmni provides the ability for the users to recall data previously filled in these forms, mark their favorite forms and compute drug orders automatically. Observations can be captured in various data formats including free text, numeric, boolean, drop-down with auto-complete ability, date, sigle select, multi select, grid etc. These forms can be created and edited by the implementer either manually using the OpenMRS administrator's interface or the custom CSV file import mechanism.

Where is it Used?

The Observations tab is mainly used by doctors and data entry personnel to record observations for a patient during a visit. These observations are captured across different forms that are configured for the hospital facility.

Benefits

This tab plays a key role in capturing patient's clinical information. The information is entered in forms that are exclusively set up for various diseases or conditions that a patient may have. For example, a facility can define a form for diabetes. This form would contain a list of all the questions that a doctor would need to ask a patient suffering from diabetes. Some questions can be populated with a pre-defined list of possible answers. This helps the doctors ensure that they have covered all the core questions that they need to ask the patient.

Screenshot

An example of a Diabetes Form

From Bahmni version 0.90 onwards, there are two ways to define observation forms. 

1. Forms 1.0 - The older "ConceptSet UI" based forms, usually defined as a "Set of Concepts" and attributes and behaviours driven by application configuration.
2. Forms 2.0 - The new React based Forms, where you would use the 'Form Builder' to define a form and elements' attributes & behaviour. 

Currently, there is no out-of-box method for migrating 1.0 forms to 2.0 (more so of the json configurations for form elements behavior).  Both the forms techniques may be used to define an observation form. Sometime in the future, we would like to deprecate Forms 1.0. We recommend that you progressively move over to the new Form 2.0.  

You can find out more about the new Forms 2.0 in Implementers Guide => Implementer Interface => Form Builder.