Community Connect 2025 - Summary

Day 1, Wednesday 14 May

The latest implementation updates

The openIMIS Community Connect meeting started with implementation updates from around the world. Andrea Martin of the World Bank and consultant Anthony Benoit presented on the implementation of CORE-MIS powered by openIMIS, which supports the operation of cash transfer and other social protection programs in São Tomé e Príncipe, Burundi, Malawi, and Chad (recording of the presentation). Anthony Benoit highlighted the configuration of the software for Burundi’s Cash for Jobs program, including data migration for close to a million individuals, the creation of a custom banking payments API, dashboard development, and grievance management integration via KoboToolbox (recording of the presentation).

Dragos Dobre of Swiss TPH then described how openIMIS is being used in Comoros to support the management of the Universal Health Insurance program (recording of the presentation). openIMIS customizations here include the registration of polygamous families, and an ‘extended enquiry’ functionality will enable multiple family members to be linked via a single unique ID. Planned enhancements include a module for pre-authorization of insurance claims that could become a generic solution for the whole openIMIS community.

The following Q&A emphasized the importance of sustainable systems that support national ownership and local capacity development, as well as the recognition that implementation delays often result from political decision making, such as on who will be covered by a program. Experience from Comoros, Cameroon and other countries demonstrates the importance of getting up and running quickly with sufficient functionality to start testing the new system, which results in a more rapid configuration of the solution. New functionalities can then follow as lessons are learned.

Ensuring openIMIS works for end users

Badr Banani from the openIMIS Coordination Desk then presented on Testlink, which provides a clear, structured process for testing new openIMIS features, helping to fix bugs and address challenges before the regular April and October releases of the software. Using Testlink enables openIMIS developers to ensure that the software works for end users. Sunil Parajuli of TinkerTech Nepal described ongoing efforts to improve both the testing functionality and the Testlink user manual (slides, recording of the presentation). 

Sunil Parajuli presented the results of a recent survey of testers which looked at the clarity and coverage of test cases, the efficiency and usage of the system, and environmental challenges. Key results included the need for more comprehensive test cases, including test cases of the CORE-MIS (powered by openIMIS) solution, better documentation on the Wiki and the provision of more training and support for software testers. These efforts are highly appreciated, as Julius Migriño (San Beda University, Philippines) noted in the chat, saying: 

I have been part of several testing phases throughout the years, and I'd like to congratulate the testing team for greatly improving the process.

An update from the Toumaï Community

openIMIS consultant George Atohmbom Yuh described successful efforts underway since late 2024 to revitalize the French-speaking Toumaï community of implementers and developers. Meeting monthly online, this group encompasses teams from Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, DRC, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal – with new countries in the pipeline. 

Following this, openIMIS Team Leader Saurav Bhattarai kicked off a brainstorming session on how to keep the openIMIS Wiki documentation up to date in different languages (as part of multi-lingual community & knowledge management). This lively discussion took in different translation Apps, the need for native language speakers to finesse terminology and a call for volunteers to join the translation efforts. Suggestions included focusing on the really critical content, more use of visuals such as workflow diagrams, and a clear process for updating translated documentation to ensure alignment and quality control.

openIMIS and academia – a ‘win-win’ situation

In the final session of the first day, Kristen Chloe Pascual of AeHIN, which acts as the openIMIS Knowledge Hub in Asia, talked about their work to link openIMIS with academic institutions in the region. Examples were drawn from the AeHIN country hubs Indonesia, Lao PDR, Nepal, Philippines and Sri Lanka (slides, recording of presentation). In a number of these countries, openIMIS is being used as a tool for teaching medical and health informatics students about health financing programs, including health insurance. The aim is to familiarize future medical practitioners with openIMIS as well as to critique the usability of openIMIS. As Sunil Parajuli said, 

working with universities is a win-win situation; students gain valuable practical experience of the operation of health financing programs while openMIS receives useful feedback.

A webinar in June 2025 (schedule of up-coming AeHIN hours) will present the key learnings from the initiative in the Philippines, while a feature article later this year will explore how openIMIS is being integrated into university and other tertiary learning courses around the world. So do keep an eye on the openIMIS news reel.

Day 2, Thursday, 14 May

Communications: ‘Without the community, we’re nothing’

Day 2 began with a look at ongoing efforts to increase the visibility of openIMIS via communications and storytelling. Rachelle Jung, Communications Advisor with the openIMIS Coordination Desk, provided an overview of the channels used to share developments from the openIMIS community with external audiences (slides, recording of presentation). LinkedIn has emerged as a particularly promising platform, with strong growth in engagement over the past six months. Improvements to the openIMIS website are underway (with testimonials and implementation maps forthcoming), a video series featuring country implementations is under development, and updated corporate materials are available for download. In addition, several feature articles are planned for the coming months.

Community members expressed a desire for more implementation experiences to be shared in the future. As the Wiki is the core source of information for communications products, Rachelle Jung strongly encouraged community members to keep pages about beneficiaries, impact and learnings up to date. ‘Without the community, we’re nothing,’ she said in her closing remarks.

Organising the products of a ‘shared garden’

A pressing challenge for the openIMIS community is how to organise the wealth of documentation in such a way that different actors – developers, implementers, users, external partners and funders – are able to find the information they need in the ‘shared garden’ they cultivate. openIMIS  IT Specialist Uwe Wahser directed participants to a new documentation landing page in the Wiki that serves as a single entry point for openIMIS users and the general public. Essential documentation per openIMIS release – including links to the user manual, installation guide and developer documentation – is prominently located on this page (recording of presentation). Other material has been pulled together under headings for different audiences – a first attempt at sorting the fertile, but partially overgrown content of the Wiki.

George Atohmbom Yuh reported on ongoing efforts to update the content of the openIMIS user manual, in both English and French, to ensure that the explanations, descriptions and screenshots it contains accurately reflect the current version of openIMIS (slides). A suggestion was made to structure the user manual in line with openIMIS functional areas so that it would be possible to ‘shuffle’ the manual content into solution-specific manuals. It was also observed that the user manual does not provide newcomers to openIMIS with enough context to understand the application in its entirety; links to video tutorials and process flows for specific functionalities could be helpful additions.  

Envisioning the future of the openIMIS community  

openIMIS is growing in complexity. More solutions and more implementations are a sign of dynamism, but also have the potential to create disruption. In the final session, participants shared ideas about the future of the openIMIS community: the opportunities, the challenges it is facing and the changes that might be needed to keep dialogue between central stakeholders, implementer and developer teams going, across different solutions, language groups and regions.

Among the challenges mentioned were the need to ensure long-term funding for core support (for maintenance, knowledge management and release management); the importance of improving documentation (both getting documentation from implementers and enhancing the documentation available for new users); and the difficulties faced in improving the performance of openIMIS in large-scale implementations (e.g. how to ensure flexible server capacity when managing data of several million beneficiaries under one instance). 

With the aim of keeping the openIMIS community engaged and connected, participants suggested organizing annual events (preferably in-person meetings) and to broaden training opportunities for implementers and developers so that they can see what already exists and how they can contribute. Collecting and sharing experiences from implementations is an important way to build ownership and excitement about openIMIS both within the community and outside it.

Saurav Bhattarai closed the Community Connect 2025, thanking everyone who took part for their contributions. These and other investments in the openIMIS community are critical for making openIMIS what it is today.