Adapted from a story originally published by the Indiana University Newsroom
Regenstrief Institute research scientist Saptarshi Purkayastha, PhD, is leading a national effort to enhance the security of OpenMRS, the world’s largest open-source electronic medical records system.
An associate professor of health informatics and director of the Health Informatics Program at the IU Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering in Indianapolis, Dr. Purkayastha and his collaborators at the IU School of Medicine and Regenstrief Institute received $1.5 million from the National Science Foundation’s Safety, Security and Privacy of Open-Source Ecosystems program. The project is one of only six university-led efforts nationwide selected for funding.
Developed through IU’s global health partnership in Kenya, AMPATH, OpenMRS now supports medical record management in more than 40 countries. Strengthening the platform’s cybersecurity will advance global efforts to protect patient information, reduce administrative costs, and promote wider adoption of open-source technology in healthcare.
The project builds on Dr. Purkayastha’s long-standing connection to OpenMRS, which began in 2008. His team will develop a structured security training and certification program for contributors, adapt vulnerability scoring systems to assess code changes, and implement a formal bug bounty program to encourage proactive security improvements.
Collaborators include Burke Mamlin, M.D., associate professor of clinical medicine at the IU School of Medicine and Regenstrief Institute researcher, who co-founded OpenMRS and serves as its chief software architect, and Xukai Zou, PhD, professor of computer science at the IU Luddy School.
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