Sms and Email Notification Howtos

The email/sms notification module is used to notify a patient about an upcoming event/appointment. The module consists of two parts, a front end setup and a back end engine. The front end is used to set the message template, access for the Sms/email engines and specify if a certain patient should receive notifications. The back end is set to query the database every hour for upcoming events which are set to send notifications and send them.

Gateways Supported as of 3.2 are:

• tm4b http://www.tm4b.com/sending-sms/ - Outside USA only
• clickatell - http://www.clickatell.com/

Setup Sms/email notification module you need follow these steps for version 4.0:

1. In Administration->Globals->Notifications and adjust the configuration as appropriate for your setup: Email Notification Hours - limits when messages should be sent SMS Notification Hours - limits when messages should be sent SMS Gateway Username - user name used for sms gateway access SMS Gateway Password - access password SMS Gateway API Key - used to interface with clickatell

Notification Email Address - Where will the message come from Email Transport Method - select SMTP, SENDMAIL or built in PHPMAIL SMTP Server Hostname - email outgoing server host/ip SMTP Server Port Number SMTP User for Authentication - outgoing server user SMTP Password for Authentication - outgoing server password

These globals from 3.2 seems to be missing in the admin tool --Tony - www.mi-squared.com 21:01, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

• $GLOBALS['smtp_use_ssl']
• $log_folder_path - this is the path where the back end process will save the logs. You must set this with write access for the user which will run the cron jobs.

(Note: at the moment only to Sms engines are supported Tm4B - http://www.tm4b.com and Clickatell - http://www.clickatell.com)

2. Install backend notification processes you need to add cron_email_notification.php and cron_sms_notification.php in system crontab to run every hour. Do this in the command *LINUX* command line. Note: Need windows instructions written

bash$ crontab -e

then put in the following lines:

* */1 * * * /var/www/html/openemr/modules/sms_email_reminder/cron_sms_notification.php

* */1 * * * /var/www/html/openemr/modules/sms_email_reminder/cron_email_notification.php

(note: make sure you adjust the path as per your configuration)

BELOW (3) is missing for V4.0 --Tony - www.mi-squared.com 21:03, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

3. Login into openEMR and go in section Admin.Notification and there you will find three new sections:

- Sms notification - set provider name and the body of the sms message

- Email notification - set subject, provider name and the body of the email message.

4. In openEMR front end, under patient summary page, in Choices section you will find two options: Allow Email and Allow Sms. This is to be set as required if you want your patient to be notified about an upcoming appointment.

5. Go to Administration->Other->Database, find the table automatic_notification, there edit the 2nd row in which email is the default value. only change the provider name, Message subject and message send from. Write the body as per your requirement in the "message" section. --Dr.Arnab Naha

6. Some useful Annonations:

***NAME*** - for entering the name of the patient automatically

***DATE*** - for entering the date of the appointment automatically

***STARTTIME*** - For entering the start time of the appointment

***ENDTIME*** - for the end time of the appointment

***PROVIDER*** - to state the provider automatically with whom the appointment is fixed --Dr. Arnab Naha

7. You need to configure mercury mail in your xampp or separately to be able to send mails. Mercury Mail acts as a secure mail server on your local machine. Dr. Arnab Naha

Patient Appointment Reminders via automated dialing system -- Sherwin - ww2.openmedpractice.com 6 Aug 2013

Open Med Practice as of July 18th 2013 began building a automated patient appointment reminder. As of Aug 6th 2013, the preliminary system is in place and we have begun beta testing of the software and tweaking the foundation of the program.

The call reminders will require only the click of a button to start the calls going out. The system will be able to make up to 100 simultaneous call. So if your office has 30 appointments on the schedule. All 30 patients will be called at once. The patient will be asked to select 1 to confirm appointment and that selection will be recorded. The second selection will be recorded which is to cancel appointment. This information will be gathered within one hour and posted back to the EMR for viewing.

Please contact us via our website ww2.openmedpractice.com to signup to be a beta tester. We will have the patch ready shortly after the release of version 4.1.2.

UPDATE 8/12/2013

Here is a screenshot of the returned report after the calls have been made. We still have some work to do on creating a better report. The report will generally show the current days call report and the day before. We are planning to build a call history report.

We are going to leave the system in a semi-automatic state with maybe an option to be completely automated. It does require some human intervention because we as humans don't always put phone numbers in the system for the patient. And there is an alert to show which patient does not have a phone number. That is the semi automatic part. Once past the phone number check the rest is automatic.

UPDATE 8/26/2013

We have made a lot of changes to the system trying to get it production ready by the Sept deadline. There is a lot of promise in the code at this point. We just want to focus on doing one thing right now and doing that one thing well. So, right now the code is really purpose driven but has the ability to be developed into multiple functions in the future.

We are still looking for another practice to use the code so we can look for weakness that we can't see being so close to the project.

UPDATE 09/02/2013

Coding for the appointment reminders has been finished and a review has been requested. Awaiting for official approval to be committed to next patch. In the mean time for those that would like to start using the patient appointment reminder feature now. The patch can be downloaded from http://callback.openmedpractice.com/pacs/Call_Reminder_Patch.zip