How to store log of automated phone calls made to patients via an IVR connected to OpenMRS

[Joaquín Blaya]

Hi guys,

We've connected OpenMRS to Verboice (http://verboice.instedd.org/), an IVR created by InSTEDD, to make automated phone calls to patients. Each time a patient complete a phone call an xform is sent from Verboice to OpenMRS and it looks like a regular encounter.

The question I had was how to have OpenMRS store the log of every call that was made which would include patient id, datetime call was made, duration of call, call result (not answered, not completed, completed, failed).

Initially I thought of having a separate table for this, but then I realized there would be benefits to having them entered as obs. 

The benefits I see to making them obs are 

1. we can use the current API/web services to have the IVR enter them and 

2. we can query them using the reporting compatibility and reporting modules

3. this is a possible interaction with the patient (though sometimes it'll be with their answering machine)

Otherwise from what I understand about the API, we would have to extend the OpenMRS API to include these new tables, and we would have to build new classes to see the data in the reporting/rep. compatibility modules.

I wanted to get your advice on this.

The second point is that I'm thinking of not having these be an encounter, rather just enter them as obs, the main reason being that in general the clinician is not going to want to see an encounter for every single phone call made, just one for when the call was completed, so we don't want to display an encounter for every call made. But we will want to have an administrator be able to query how many patients received which automated phone call.

Joaquín
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Gerente de Desarrollo, eHealth Systems
Research Fellow, Escuela de Medicina de Harvard
Moderador, GHDOnline.org