The mUzima Advantage: Most mHealth applications either only allow the user to collect data or to only view data, but do not have seamless features to do both. Further, few interoperate seamlessly with OpenMRS to allow this mechanism. mUzima does this well.

Historical Data on mUzima – Overview: mUzima has a mechanism to display historical data in a well organized user interface. Historical data refers to observations ever recorded about a patient, and comprises items such as signs and symptoms, lab tests, and prescribed medications. These observations are usually grouped into encounters that represent all data recorded in one data collection form or in one encounter session between a patient and a healthcare provider.

Historical data views are usable for data recorded on the mobile device (which are not yet synchronized to the server) and the data retrieved from OpenMRS. To optimize on data plans while retrieving data from OpenMRS, the application has a mechanism to download only new data based on previous downloads. The application downloads data for only the list of patients available on the device, and for only the selected list of concepts.  This allows providers to quickly search for the patient records and related observations.

It should be noted that the historical data downloaded onto the device is easily configurable, and is also not constrained to the data elements on the forms within the device. As such, you can easily see any relevant historical data element for a client as long as it is in the OpenMRS system.