Contributing to Care
Care is an open-source Electronic Medical Record (EMR) platform for managing patients, health workers, and hospitals. It is built and maintained in the open, and contributions of every kind are welcome — code, documentation, bug reports, and translations.
This guide is for developers who want to run Care locally, understand how it fits together, and submit changes back upstream.
:::tip New here? If you're looking for product or operator documentation rather than the contributor workflow, start at the core documentation home. :::
The two repositories
Care is split across two repositories under the ohcnetwork GitHub organization:
| Repository | Stack | What it is |
|---|---|---|
ohcnetwork/care | Django REST Framework (Python) | The backend — the API, data model, and business logic for patients, facilities, and users. |
ohcnetwork/care_fe | React + TypeScript | The frontend — the web application that talks to the backend API. |
The frontend is a separate app that points at a running backend, so most full-stack work involves running both repositories side by side.
How this guide is organized
- Local development — get each side of the stack running on your machine:
- Backend setup — the Django REST Framework API.
- Frontend setup — the React + TypeScript app.
- Nix dev environment — a reproducible, all-in-one development shell.
- Plugins — extend Care with pluggable apps without forking it.
- Contribution workflow — branching, pull requests, reviews, and how changes get merged.
Prerequisites
You should be comfortable with:
- Git and GitHub — cloning, branching, and opening pull requests.
- Basic web development — running a local dev server and editing application code.
You don't need prior healthcare-domain knowledge to make your first contribution. The local-development guides cover the language- and tooling-specific setup for each repository.
Where to get help
- Community Slack — join the OHC community at slack.ohc.network to ask questions and reach maintainers.
- Good first issues — browse issues labelled
good first issueorhelp wantedfor a curated starting point. Comment on an issue to let maintainers know you're picking it up.
:::note Code of Conduct All participation in the Care community is governed by the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct. Please read it before contributing. :::