Google Summer of Code: Meet OpenMRS Contributors!

Google Summer of Code is a well-known program for ambitious students who want to gather experience in work (in GSOC they can do that in open-source organizations). A week ago we met accepted students in each organization for every project. Congratulations to those who were accepted and for those who hadn’t been accepted – don’t be sad or mad. Focus on developing your skills, because you can try one more time in next year and there’s a big chance that you will get into that. Your hard work will pay off.

Only 2 weeks until the students will get down to the real work. By the real work I mean 10 weeks of coding for their organization in their projects. For some of them it will be a hard time, full of stress but also a lot of hapiness when things go smoothly and without any issues. Probably there is a part of knowledge that students will have to assimilate quickly to be able to end the project. But for sure everyone will do everything they can to drive the project to the end with a success.

I’m glad that I can observe students during their journey from the back. That’s possible because I’m taking part in the GSOC as somebody like admin. My task is to make sure that they will feel good and supported during the GSOC. I’m very excited for that and with hope I’m waiting for the official starts of the GSOC.

But before I will be describing their ups and downs I want to introduce them. It’s a tradition that students introduce themselves and tell a little bit from the private side. So let’s start – the whole process you can track at talk.openmrs.org under the #GSOC posts. I’ve described the projects in the previous post HERE so you can look at the requirements and the overall description.

SMART on FHiR

“Hello everyone, I am Ankit kumar from Bihar, India. I am currently a third-year undergraduate at the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Gwalior, pursuing a five-year integrated bachelor of technology and Master of business administration in Information technology and currently waiting for the result of 3rd year to come out. I have been selected for the SMART-on-FHIR project. The main objective of this project is to support patient and encounter context SMART launch and deliver a production-level project. It will allow the user to use the already existing health apps using OpenMRS resources securely.”

Support for Extended Operations in FHIR

“Hi everyone, I am Medhavi Srivastava from India. I am currently a third-year undergraduate at Atal Bihari Vajpayee-Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Gwalior, pursuing a five-year integrated Bachelors’s and Masters’s in Information Technology. I am working on the project Support for Extended Operations in FHIR. The project aims to support the operations: $lastn, which would fetch the most recent n Observations corresponding to the specified Patient resources; the $lastn-encounters which would fetch all Observations matching the most recent n Encounters corresponding to the specified Patient resources, and the type level and instance level $everything operation on Patient to fetch all the information related to the specified Patient reference.”

Modernizing Administration functions for OpenMRS

“Hello Everyone, I am Vineet Sharma and I am selected for GSoC’21 under the Microfrontend Squad. I am working on the Modernizing Admin functions for OpenMRS: Clinical Data Management (User Dashboard, Clinic Dashboard, & Patient Chart improvements) 1 which is aimed to develop various Clinical views and admin sections for the same. Along with that, I’ll be making the screens that would be used to handle 3 major admin functions: Visits, Encounters, Observations.

I am a resident of Haryana, India. I am a pre-final year student pursuing Integrated B.Tech +M.Tech 5-year Dual Degree from NIT Hamirpur. My Slack Nickname is Vineet Sharma. The reason I looked out for going through open source was to be a part of the bigger picture, the real-life development. I have done internships before but they were all that I handled by myself. I wanted to learn from the senior developers, be a better developer, make outreach to great communities and joining OpenMRS gave me all these opportunities best in the hand.”

“Hi everyone, I am Bartłomiej Rasztabiga from Poland, a student at Warsaw University of Technology, majoring in Computer Science. I’m currently pursuing undergraduate studies there, since 2020. In GSoC 2021 I’m working on the project The REST of Administration. This project aims to provide REST endpoints for administrative functions that are not yet available through REST. That’s a requirement for proceeding with developing new Microfrontend Architecture.”

OpenMRS Android Client Project 3.0.x

“Hi everyone, I am Saurabh Kumar from India, I am a senior year undergraduate at Indian Institute of Information Technology, Jabalpur pursuing Computer Science and Engineering. I will be working on the OpenMRS Android Client Project, This year the prime objective of the proposed project is to work on making the Android client more extendable easy for the implementers to deploy and implement by encapsulating common functionalities of the app using Jitpack library. what Interests me about OpenMRS is the supportive community and the learning by doing things inside the community be it collaboration, or project discussion I have learnt a lot by contributing to this community.”

Patch Security Vulnerabilities Identified by NCSU

“Hi everyone, looking forward to working with you! My name is Kate Belson and I’m from Southampton in the UK. I’ve just finished my first year at the University of Exeter, where I’m studying BSc Computer Science. I am particularly interested in Cyber Security, AI, and Space. For GSOC I’m working on the Cyber Security project to help patch OpenMRS. I chose to apply to OpenMRS as it’s an important and ethical open source project where I believe I can grow my programming skills. This will be my first experience working on an open-source project and I can’t wait to get involved.”

Export & import feature for the OMRS Reporting module

“I’m Heshan Andrews, a sophomore at University of Colombo School Computing, Sri Lanka. I’m working on the Export and Import feature for the OMRS reporting module project which is aimed to integrate the export and import features for period indicator reports into the DHIS connector module. My slack profile name is Heshan Andrews. I like how OpenMRS is a platform where programmers like us can come in work on projects that actually make an impact and the community is very friendly and welcoming too.”

Improve the functionalities of the DHIS2 Connector module

“Hi everyone! It’s a pleasure to work with OpenMRS in the Google Summer of Code 2021. I’m Piumal Rathnayake from Sri Lanka. Currently a 2nd year Undergraduate at Faculty of Engineering, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. Studying Computer Engineering as my field of specialization. I have been selected for the Project “Improving Functionalities of DHIS Connector Module”. This project is about the DHIS Connector Module which is used to send aggregated data from OpenMRS to DHIS2 Instance. The project aims to develop the DHIS Connector module with new features and functionalities.”

As a woman I’m really proud for those girls and for me they’ve already won the whole program. It’s important to invite girls into man’s projects and industries. They won’t take your place but rather create a new one.

There is one more thing which is a success. The fact that one of the students is from Poland. That’s a big thing because in previous years we could rarely see somebody from Poland in OpenMRS and now that young and ambitious man represents us in the whole world. One more time I’m really proud.

Please keep fingers crossed for them – I will and from time to time write them some nice and supportive words so they’ll feel appreciated.