Post authored by Gareth Bowen, Medic’s Chief Architect.
Medic is excited to announce the release of the next version of the Community Health Application Framework: 3.5.0. This release adds our first third party facility electronic medical record (EMR) integration, significant performance improvements, and lots of bug fixes.
Facility EMR integration
Version 3.5.0 includes an integration with SIH, a facility-based application in Mali. This enables patient referral information to be sent to a clinic and treatment data to be returned, closing the loop between the Community Health Worker and the clinic. This integration is possible thanks in part to a new outbound push feature, which is configurable and will facilitate integrations with other systems in the future.
Optimizing the history tab
We found that loading the History tab was taking a long time in projects with many places. This was due to loading the Places filter on the tab. By delaying the initialization of the filter until needed we found performance improvements in three key areas.
This work also reduced the idle memory usage by 55% allowing the entire application to run more smoothly, particularly on low end devices.
Optimizing sentinel processing
By reducing the throttling of change processing and reducing the number of database writes we have greatly improved the rate at which Sentinel processes changes. Clearing a backlog of 200 documents used to take 67 seconds, but with 3.5.0 this has been reduced to 33 seconds, a 50% reduction.
To make Sentinel even more responsive to changes, transitions are now executed synchronously when messages are received. This means that replies are generated immediately and the user is notified of the success or error of their message as soon as possible.
Reducing the app size
After some analysis, it was found that the webapp included font files that weren’t required. Certain files weren’t minified, and some others weren’t compressed. These fixes combined reduced the size by 2.6MB making the application easier to download and update.
Sort muted contacts
Muted contacts are now sorted to the bottom of the contact list so you can more easily see all your active contacts.
And much more…
This release includes 5 new features, 16 improvements to existing features, 11 performance improvements and dozens of bug fixes. For a complete list of changes and upgrading instructions, check out the release notes.
We hope you’re as excited about version 3.5.0 as we are, and we can’t wait to hear your feedback.
Looking ahead
We’re already hard at work on the next versions with features in the pipeline including configurable contact hierarchies, more integrations, and faster SMS responses. To stay up to date and follow along on our progress, keep an eye on the product roadmap.