Bridging Code and Culture:
My Journey Through the OpenMRS Hackathon in Ethiopia
As the year 2023 kicked off, I had the unique opportunity to be a part of a vibrant, culturally rich experience, guiding the implementation of digital health solutions in Ethiopia. This story unfolds with the Ethiopian Ministry of Health expressing interest in embracing open-source solutions for patient data management, favouring globally recognized, sustainable digital goods.
Organizations like ICAP-Ethiopia have independently begun to explore the realm of OpenMRS technologies. OpenMRS, recognized as a Global Good and Digital Public Good, has gained acclaim for co-creating and sustaining a reliable, open-source electronic medical record system. However, the technical teams in Ethiopia sought a deeper understanding of the broad spectrum of OpenMRS technologies and quality assurance practices, hence the initiation of this event.
In collaboration with ICAP-Ethiopia and the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), OpenMRS community planned a bootcamp and hackathon designed to onboard Ethiopian developers. Our mission was to orient these developers to the OpenMRS tech stack and quality assurance tools, along with fostering an atmosphere of collaboration and knowledge exchange.
The hackathon’s focus was majorly on new OpenMRS technologies, such as the forms engine, the new frontend framework, and FHIR-based approaches to interoperability. However, the prospect of quality assurance initially drew limited attention. To many, the term “QA” echoed past experiences of laborious manual testing that seemed to stifle their productivity.
I seized this moment before a lunch break to present a real-life instance of a developer’s code failing an automated end-to-end test. I took everyone through OpenMRS’ testing approach and the role of automated QA tooling in our development process, underscoring its effectiveness in detecting issues swiftly. The tangible example spurred newfound interest in quality assurance among the attendees.
In the following days, I had several individual sessions with tech leads eager to understand more about automated testing. I could see a spark in their eyes; they were genuinely intrigued and willing to adopt this approach. This wave of enthusiasm was a testimony to the event’s success.
The hackathon culminated with ICAP-Ethiopia and OpenMRS agreeing to integrate automated testing into the EthiOHRI development process via an OpenMRS Fellowship & Capstone Project. This project would pair an OpenMRS QA Fellow with an ICAP-Ethopia developer for six to eight weeks to establish unit, integration, and end-to-end (e2e) tests as part of EthiOHRI’s automated testing framework.
My Ethiopian adventure was more than a professional journey. While discovering Ethiopia’s coffee culture and tasting injera, a traditional Ethiopian dish, I found a new appreciation for this rich and vibrant culture. I came back home with packets of Ethiopian coffee beans, memories of new friendships, and a heart filled with the satisfaction of having contributed to a transformative healthcare initiative.
Indeed, the future of healthcare in Ethiopia is brighter than ever, and I feel privileged to be a part of this journey. Our shared vision, the camaraderie, and the strides we’ve made are paving the way for impactful change, and I’m excited to see where this road takes us.
