Inpatient EHR Allergies - hmislk/hmis GitHub Wiki

Inpatient EHR — Allergies

Patient allergies are recorded on the patient record (so they follow the patient across admissions, OPD visits, and channelling), but are displayed prominently on every admission's Inpatient Dashboard.

Where allergies appear

  • Inpatient Dashboard → Patient context column → Allergies panel — list of yellow warning banners, one per allergy. If empty, the panel reads "No known allergies".
  • Admit a Patient page — allergies section. Allergies added here are saved against the patient and are available on every future encounter.
  • Patient EHR / OPD profile — same list, editable from there as well.
  • Clinical Discharge page — read-only display alongside discharge diagnoses.

Recording an allergy

From the dashboard click Manage Allergies (Admission panel) → opens the allergy editor.

For each allergy you can capture:

  • Item (drug or substance) — autocomplete against the clinical items / drug list.
  • Reaction / detail — free text. Common entries: "Rash", "Anaphylaxis 2018", "Asthma exacerbation".
  • Severity / status — depends on what the configured clinical finding type allows.

A single allergy can have:

  • Only an item (e.g., "Penicillin"), or
  • Only free text (e.g., "Seafood — unknown ingredient"), or
  • Both (e.g., "Penicillin — Anaphylaxis").

Save returns you to the dashboard with the new banner visible.

Removing an allergy

From the same Manage Allergies page, delete the row. The change applies immediately — the admission dashboard refreshes the allergy panel on the next page load.

Removing a real allergy is a clinically serious action. Only do this when it is genuinely incorrect (wrong patient, mis-typed). Don't delete an allergy because the patient says "I don't have it anymore" — re-confirm with the consultant first.

Important — no automatic checking

The current implementation:

  • Displays the allergy list everywhere the patient is seen.
  • Does not check prescribed drugs against the allergy list.
  • Does not generate any pop-up, dialog, or block when an allergen is prescribed.
  • Does not drive a CDS rule engine.

In other words, the allergies panel is informational. The clinician remains responsible for reading it before prescribing. An allergy-aware prescribing layer is a planned improvement — see Inpatient EHR Overview.

Scope: per-patient, not per-admission

If a patient is re-admitted six months later, the existing allergies are already on the new admission's dashboard. There is no per-admission allergy list; the list is the patient's lifelong allergy profile.

See also