New in 2.0

The following is a list of new features and improvements in the 2.0 release. You should also check Known Issues and the Implementation Checklist.

Major Features in this release include:

• online bookings
• enhanced patient reminders
• improved Smart Flow Sheet integration
• insurance claims
• improved support for practices with multiple locations
• patient product alerts
• multi-part SMS
• scheduled reporting

Online Bookings

OpenVPMS now includes an online booking API, kindly donated by Australian Animal Hospitals.
This has been integrated into MyHealth1st's PetYeti Find A Vet portal.

See Online Bookings for more details.

Patient Reminders

Patient reminders have been enhanced to:

• allow a reminder to be delivered by multiple methods.
  E.g a reminder may now be sent via both SMS and email
• use rules to determine how a reminder may be sent.
  E.g. a rule may specify that a reminder may be sent via email, but if the customer has no email, print it for mailing instead.
• automate sending email and SMS reminders
• support grouping reminders by customer or patient. Previously, reminders could only be grouped by customer
• improve SMS grouped reminders. These may now include patient and reminder details.
• improve performance

Smart Flow Sheet

The Smart Flow Sheet integration has been improved to:

• charge treatments given to a patient in Smart Flow Sheet
• synchronise products and clinicians with Smart Flow Sheet
• add notes entered in Smart Flow Sheet to the corresponding patient's history
• add support to specify a department on Check-In
• add support to associate a default department with a work list
• add support to import forms and anaesthetic sheets
• discharge patients from Smart Flow Sheet on Check-Out
• automatically import documents on discharge

NOTE: Users of the Smart Flow Sheet integration in OpenVPMS 1.9 need to co-ordinate with Smart Flow Sheet support prior upgrading to OpenVPMS 2.0.
This is because any Smart Flow Sheet account created for OpenVPMS 1.9 needs to be reconfigured to work with OpenVPMS 2.0.
In addition, Smart Flow Sheet support should be notified when synchronising products for the first time as it affects existing billing parameters and treatment templates.

Insurance Claims

OpenVPMS can now:

• record patient insurance policies, and make claims against those policies
• submit claims online via PetSure VetHub
• submit claims via email

Multiple Locations

Practices with multiple locations can now limit clinician, work list and printer selection to those available at the current practice location.

For clinicians and work lists, an All Locations option is provided to enable selection outside of the current practice location.

For printers, the available printers can be listed on the Practice Location.

Patient Product Alerts

Patient alerts can now be automatically created when a product is charged, by adding Patient Alert Types to Medication, Merchandise, or Service products.

SMS

SMS messages longer than 160 characters can now be sent, by setting the Maximum Parts field of the SMS Configuration. This determines the maximum number of parts that may be sent in a single message. These are sent as multiple SMS by the SMS provider, but are concatenated together so that the recipient sees a single message.

See:

• SMS Configuration: SMSGlobal Email2SMS
• SMS Configuration: Clickatell SMTP Connection
• SMS Configuration: Generic Email Gateway

Scheduled Reporting

Reports may now be scheduled to run automatically, with the output written to a directory, emailed and/or printed.

See Scheduled Report for more details.

Miscellaneous

Medical Records Search

The Patient Medical Records Summary and Problems now include a Search field. This performs a case-insensitive search on patient records for the input text. The following fields are searched:

• notes and addenda
• record type
• clinician, if the clinician is being displayed
• batch number, if batches are being displayed
• medication product name and label
• invoice item product name
• investigation type and identifier
• document name
• problem presenting complaint and diagnosis
• weight

Use Logged In Clinician

The Practice now has a Use Logged In Clinician option that determines how Clinician fields are populated. When:

• selected, Clinician fields default to:
  • the current user, when the logged in user is a clinician; else
  • the workflow clinician or the last selected clinician, when the logged in user is not a clinician

This is the preferred choice.

• unselected, Clinician fields default to the workflow clinician, or the last selected clinician  

Only use this if workstations are shared. This reflects the existing behaviour.

New Prescriptions from Medications

To save time and reduce errors when creating prescriptions, support has been added to create new prescriptions from existing patient Medication records via a New Prescription button.

Prescription Dispensing Instructions

If a medication has dispensing instructions, these will be displayed when editing prescriptions.

Add Visit & Note

The Visit reason can now be specified when using Add Visit & Note to add a new Visit and Note to the patient history.

Email multiple attachment selection

The Attach button of the email Write window now supports selecting multiple attachments at a time.

Data Entry Enhancements

Macros can now include {__} tokens that indicate text that needs to be replaced by the user.  Pressing:

• Ctrl - Right Arrow - jumps to the next token, and selects it
• Ctrl - Left Arrow - jumps to the previous token, and selects it

This allows users to progressively fill in text. E.g. a macro could generate:

Reason:  {__}
History: {__}

Current medications: {__}

What Preventative health cover is being used and do you need to purchase any today? {__}
Vaccination: {__}
Worming: {__}
Flea control: {__}
Heartworm Prevention: {__} 

Examine: {__}
Mentation: {__}
Body condition score: {__}
MM: {__}              CRT: {__}
HR: {__}               RR: {__}
LN: {__}
Temperature: {__}

Restrict Ordering

The Practice now has a Restrict Ordering option. When enabled, supplier orders  must be finalised by a clinician.
This can be used in jurisdictions that require restricted drug ordering to be limited to clinicans.

Address Format

An address format may now used to specify how addresses are displayed in reports.
The party:getBillingAddress(), party:getCorrespondenceAddress() and party:getPracticeAddress() functions each now support formatting addresses on single or multiple lines.

New JXPath Extension Functions

JXPath extension functions have been added to improve reporting:

• list functions:
  • to return the first object in a collection
  • enhanced names(), join(), sortNames() and sortNamesOf() to use a different separator for the last element in a collection, to produce strings like 'Health check, Vaccination and Proheart'
  • enhanced names(), join(), sortNames() and sortNamesOf() to support singular and plural collections to produce strings like 'Fido is' and 'Fido and Spot are'
• expression functions
  • to replace a string with another if the first string is too long.
    This can be used when generating SMS messages to use an alternative message if the original text is too long.
• contact functions:
  • email functions to locate and format email contacts
  • phone functions to locate and format phone contacts
  • address functions to locate and format location contacts
• party functions
  • enhanced getBillingAddress(), getCorresspondenceAddress() and getPracticeAddress() to support formatting addresses as single or multiple lines