Dear Subscriber First Name,

Greetings from the Bahmni Team!

Welcome to the second edition of the Bahmni Community Newsletter! We hope this newsletter finds you well.

A lot has happened since our last edition in May 2025. From a landmark licensing decision to a fresh UX vision and an exciting 2026 roadmap taking shape - there is plenty to share. Here is what has been happening across the Bahmni ecosystem!

If you would like to get in touch with us, please email us or fill out this form and we’ll get back to you.

Product Updates

Bahmni Roadmap 2026

We are shaping the Bahmni 2026 roadmap and would love your input! Key themes under consideration:

• User Experience (UX) Enhancement

• Technology Upgrade and Sustainability

• Migrating critical Angular modules to React to future-proof the application's front-end technology stack

  • Completing the upgrade of all Bahmni modules to be fully compatible with the latest stable versions of OpenMRS (up to 2.8)

  • Abstracting core services like Bahmni events and the file storage model to enhance overall system stability and backward compatibility

• License Update of the project from AGPL to a combination of MIT and MPLv2 with HD

• OAuth/OIDC Integration (Keycloak)

• OpenELIS Migration to OpenELIS Global

How you can contribute:

• Comment on the Roadmap Wiki page: Page: Bahmni Roadmap

• Post feature suggestions on OpenMRS Talk: Bahmni - OpenMRS Talk

• Join #community on the Bahmni Slack workspace

• Attend the weekly Wednesday PAT calls

License Change: Bahmni Moves to MPL v2 and MIT

This is the most significant governance update since the formation of the Bahmni Coalition.

In October 2025, the Bahmni Coalition proposed changing Bahmni’s license from AGPL v3 to a mix of MPL v2 with Healthcare Disclaimer and MIT. In November 2025, the Coalition confirmed the decision after receiving unanimous support from the community.

Why the change?

• AGPL v3 copyleft terms have limited adoption and contribution from external organizations.

• MPL v2 simplifies and reduces legal friction for partners.

• More permissive licensing enables implementers and vendors to build complementary products, growing the broader ecosystem.

• Bahmni remains free and open-source. This change is about removing barriers, not adding them.

UX Redesign: A New Clinical Experience

In 2025, we announced an initiative to redesign Bahmni’s clinical application. Clinicians have long raised feedback about navigation friction: switching between tabs, losing context mid-consultation, and the disconnect between the patient dashboard and the consultation form. We are addressing this head-on.

What’s coming:

• Split-screen view: Patient history and the active consultation are visible side by side; no more context-switching.

• Simplified navigation: Designed to reduce cognitive load in real clinical workflows.

• Modern technology stack: Bahmni’s 12-year-old AngularJS frontend is being progressively migrated to React, enabling modernization and sustainability and also simultaneously transitioning from REST APIs to HL7 FHIR endpoints, enabling standardization and interoperability.

The team is working towards an MVP. Attend the weekly PAT calls for updates.

Community Updates

Bahmni becomes the first open source EMR supporting RTL languages

Our community contributors, Next Medtech, a social enterprise comprising over 30 clinicians and software developers in Syria, in collaboration with IPLit (a Bahmni coalition member), spearheaded the localization, development, and deployment of Bahmni RTL (Right-to-Left). 

This comprehensive effort ranged from building the RTL/Arabic version and integrating clinical workflows to supporting the system adoption across multiple large academic hospitals. The project received funding from the World Health Organization and UK RAEng.

Bahmni at NRCeS Users’ Meet & Expo 2026

Bahmni was invited to the NRCeS Meet in Pune, India on February 27th, an event organized by C-DAC and supported by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), focused on building an interoperable, secure, and smart digital healthcare ecosystem in India.

Key Points:

• National Recognition: Bahmni was selected as one of only four primary platforms to present to the national audience, showcasing our interoperability journey.

• Simplified Standards: We demonstrated how Bahmni simplifies SNOMED CT coding, allowing clinicians to produce globally readable data without "extra clicks."

• Community Engagement: We connected with over 200 policymakers and innovators, reinforcing Bahmni's role as a critical piece of India's digital health puzzle and gaining fresh ideas on AI and standards for our next update.

Join the Community

We encourage you to share your insights and collaborate with our community. You can connect with us through the following channels:

1. Community Forums: Join discussions on the OpenMRS Talk Forum to share your observations, ask questions, and provide feedback.

2. Slack Channels: Engage with the community on the Bahmni Slack.

3. Weekly PAT Calls: Participate in weekly Product Architecture Team (PAT) calls every Wednesday at 1:00 PM UTC (06:30 PM IST) on Zoom. This is an opportunity to discuss development updates, share your experiences, and contribute to ongoing projects.

Your input and collaboration are invaluable to us as we strive to improve and expand the Bahmni platform.