Bahmnivs
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REDCap: If the requirement is structured research data capture rather than running a hospital
Bahmni
Open source hospital information system and EMR for low-resource hospitals, built on OpenMRS
As of 1 September 2026, Bahmni is free to use. A free hospital system used in more than 500 sites across 50 countries, governed by a coalition under OpenMRS Inc. Softwr lists it under Healthcare. Bahmni is made by Bahmni Coalition (fiscally sponsored by OpenMRS Inc), available on Web, Linux, Android.
Overview
What Bahmni does
Bahmni is a hospital information system and electronic medical record assembled from established open source components: OpenMRS for the clinical record, OpenELIS for laboratory, Odoo for billing and inventory, and dcm4chee for imaging, wrapped in a clinical interface designed for high-volume, low-resource hospitals. It handles registration, outpatient and inpatient clinical documentation, orders, laboratory results, pharmacy, billing and reporting. Its governance is the fact a buyer should know. Thoughtworks built Bahmni from January 2013 for a rural Indian hospital and transferred ownership in October 2017 to the Bahmni Coalition, under the fiscal sponsorship of the non-profit OpenMRS Inc. Thoughtworks remains on the governing committee but is no longer the owner. Bahmni is recognised as a Digital Public Good by the Digital Public Goods Alliance, which matters because donors and ministries increasingly require that designation before funding a health information system. Adopters are mission hospitals, NGO health networks and ministries of health across Africa and South Asia. The economics are the trade-off and they are widely misunderstood. The licence fee is zero and the total cost is not: servers or cloud hosting, network and power reliability, configuration of forms and workflows, data migration, training, and a support arrangement with an implementation partner. Coalition members and independent firms charge for exactly this. A hospital that budgets for hardware and not for a multi-year support contract typically ends up with a system nobody can safely upgrade.
What people use it for
- A mission or charitable hospital in India or East Africa that cannot fund a commercial hospital information system licence but needs a real EMR rather than paper
- A ministry of health standardising district hospitals on one system and required by donors to use a recognised Digital Public Good
- An NGO health network wanting one clinical record across several facilities with reporting that can feed a national DHIS2 instance
- A hospital that needs the clinical record, laboratory, pharmacy and billing to share one patient identity rather than running four disconnected systems
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Bahmni.
- The licence is free and the implementation is not; configuration, data migration, training and multi-year support from a partner routinely cost far more than a small commercial system would have, and hospitals that budget only for hardware stall.
- There is no single vendor with an obligation to you unless you contract one, so upgrade timing, security patching and defect resolution depend on whichever partner you hired and how long they stay engaged.
- It integrates four substantial open source systems, which means an upgrade touches OpenMRS, OpenELIS, Odoo and the imaging stack together, and hospitals with heavy customisation often freeze on an old version rather than risk it.
- Skilled Bahmni implementers are concentrated in a small number of firms in India and a few African countries, so a hospital outside those markets may find nobody local who can support it.
- Funding for the coalition and its shared engineering comes from donors and member contributions rather than licence revenue, which makes the pace of core development dependent on grant cycles rather than on customer demand.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Bahmni
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- BahmnivsLimeSurvey
LimeSurvey: If you only need to collect structured data from patients rather than run clinical operations
- BahmnivsCommCare
CommCare: If the programme is community-based frontline care rather than facility-based hospital operations
Pricing
What Bahmni costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Bahmni
Free
- AGPL open source, no licence fee
- All modules included
- Community support via forum and documentation
- Implementation, hosting, configuration and support charged separately by partners
- No vendor-provided service level unless you contract one
Capabilities
Features
OpenMRS clinical record
Patient registration, encounters, diagnoses, observations and longitudinal history
Configurable clinical forms
Build observation templates and clinical workflows per department without code
Laboratory integration
OpenELIS for specimen tracking, results entry and turnaround reporting
Billing and inventory
Odoo-based billing, stock and procurement for pharmacy and consumables
Imaging
dcm4chee PACS integration for radiology study storage and retrieval
Inpatient management
Ward, bed and admission workflows alongside outpatient consultation
Offline-capable clinical app
Continue consulting during network interruptions common in the target settings
Reporting
Operational and clinical reports, including exports towards DHIS2 national reporting
Multi-language and localisation
Adapt terminology, language and workflows to the country and hospital
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is Bahmni free?
The software is, under an open source licence. Implementation, hosting, configuration, training and support are charged by whichever partner you engage.
Who owns and governs Bahmni?
Thoughtworks transferred ownership in October 2017 to the Bahmni Coalition, under the fiscal sponsorship of the non-profit OpenMRS Inc. Thoughtworks remains on the governing committee.
What does an implementation actually cost?
It varies by hospital size and country, but expect the dominant costs to be partner services, training and multi-year support rather than software or hardware. Get a fixed-scope quote covering upgrades, not just go-live.
Is it a recognised Digital Public Good?
Yes, Bahmni is on the Digital Public Goods Alliance register, which is increasingly a condition of donor funding for health information systems.
Where is it used?
More than 500 implementations across roughly 50 countries, concentrated in South Asia and Africa.
Keep looking
Where to go from Bahmni
- Bahmni alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Bahmni pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Bahmni badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Healthcare softwareThe full category
- Best Healthcare softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Healthcare software for
Compare Bahmni with
- OpenMRS
- DHIS2
- GNU Health
- OpenClinica
- Open Dental
- Doctolib
- Ambra Health
- Clue
- Meditech
- Medscape
- Cerner
- PioneerRx
- Philips IntelliSpace PACS
- Rad AI
- Aidoc
- Annalise.ai
- PioneerRx
- Rx30
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Bahmni, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Bahmni
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