Healthcare EMR Patterns

Curated by Skill Harbor: development patterns for electronic medical records that put patient safety ahead of everything, contributed by Dr. Keyur Patel (Health1 Super Speciality Hospitals). Every design decision is evaluated against one question: could this harm a patient. The encounter flow runs vertically on a single page with a sticky patient header showing allergies and active medications, from chief complaint through history, examination, vitals with auto-calculated clinical scores, diagnosis with ICD-10 and SNOMED search, medications with drug interaction checking, investigations, and plan to sign and lock. The medication safety pattern blocks prescribing on critical interactions by default, requiring a documented override reason stored in the audit trail, while major interactions need active acknowledgment. Red flags trigger non-dismissable alerts, never toasts. Once signed, an encounter locks completely and only an addendum, a separate linked record, can add information. Clinical UI patterns cover vitals display with range highlighting and trend arrows, lab results with critical value alerts, one-click prescription PDFs, and stricter accessibility than typical web apps: 4.5:1 contrast, large touch targets for gloved hands, no color-only indicators, no auto-dismissing toasts for clinical alerts. By @affaan-m, listed here with credit to its creator and contributor. From the affaan-m/ECC repository (MIT). Honest caveats: patterns do not make an app compliant or clinically safe by themselves, a real clinical review is required; never put real patient data in a chat while using it; this is development guidance, not medical advice. Skill Harbor never reviews the code, review it yourself before use.