Free and Open-Source EHR Software for Dental Clinics

This guide is for clinics where dental records have to live next to medical ones: community health centres with a dental clinic, hospital dental departments, multi-specialty clinics and dental schools. It also helps small clinics looking for free patient management software. The short answer: among free EHRs, only GNU Health ships dental charting, through its dentistry package with an odontogram. OpenEMR is the best-maintained general EHR for a small clinic, especially in the US. Bahmni, built on OpenMRS, suits hospitals and multi-specialty clinics. OSCAR EMR, Care2x and FreeMED are poor choices for a new installation.

If you run a dental-only office, a dental practice system will fit better than any EHR; see our guide to free dental practice management software.

The short list

OpenEMR: the practical default for a small clinic

OpenEMR is the most active free EHR, with regular releases (8.4.1 in September 2026), an official Docker image and public demos. It covers provider calendars and recalls, encounters, problem lists, medications and allergies, e-prescribing, lab results, a patient portal, a FHIR API and US medical billing with X12 claim files. The project states that version 8 is ONC-certified, which is a US health IT certification. For dentistry there is no tooth chart, perio chart or dental claim form, and CDT codes are not shipped. Clinics build a dental exam form with the layout editor, add their own procedure codes to the fee sheet and upload radiographs as patient documents. Community support is free on the forum; guaranteed support comes from independent paid vendors. Pick it for a small or mixed clinic that wants one well-maintained record.

GNU Health: the only free EHR with a dental chart

GNU Health is a free hospital and health information system from GNU Solidario. Its dentistry package adds an FDI odontogram for permanent and primary teeth, tooth status (decayed, missing, filled, for extraction), per-tooth and per-surface procedures, signed treatments and printable odontogram and procedure reports. Around that sit appointments, prescriptions, lab, imaging through an optional Orthanc PACS, pharmacy, stock and billing. The dental part is basic: no perio chart, no ortho module and no US or UK dental claim formats. The server runs only on GNU/Linux or FreeBSD with PostgreSQL, and installing and upgrading it takes real Linux administration. Pick it when a hospital, public clinic or dental school wants tooth-level records in the same system as medical care.

Bahmni: OpenMRS packaged for hospitals

Bahmni combines OpenMRS with billing, lab and imaging into one hospital EMR. Bahmni Lite (2.0.0, tagged in September 2026) bundles the EMR, reports and Crater billing; Bahmni Standard adds Odoo for billing, pharmacy and inventory, OpenELIS for the lab and DCM4CHEE for DICOM imaging. There is no odontogram or dental billing code set. A dental unit builds its own examination form in the Form Builder, ideally with FDI tooth numbers as a coded list, and adds dental procedures as billable services. It runs on Docker; the Bahmni wiki recommends giving Docker Desktop at least 8 GB of memory. Lite 2.0 is a very new release with a new interface, so test it before moving a live clinic. Pick it for a hospital or multi-specialty clinic with in-house IT or an implementation partner.

OSCAR EMR: Canadian, medical and now end of life

OSCAR EMR is a free (GPL v2+) EMR from McMaster University for Canadian family practice, with eCharts, eForms, prescriptions, referrals and OHIP and MSP billing. It has no dental features. More important: on 26 August 2026 the OSCAR Galaxy community announced that maintenance and support for community OSCAR 19 had been suspended, recommended migrating to CARLOS EMR, and mentioned published and undisclosed security vulnerabilities. Do not start a new clinic on OSCAR 19. Its only realistic dental role is in a Canadian community health centre that already runs an OSCAR variant, for shared registration, scheduling and referrals to dentists, while charting stays in dental software.

Care2x: a dormant hospital system

Care2x is a free (GPL) web-based hospital information system covering admissions, outpatients, wards, lab, pharmacy and surgery. It has no dental charting, treatment planning or imaging module. The last stable package, 2.6.27, dates from January 2012; a community GitHub repository received PHP 8 compatibility work in December 2025 but has no tagged releases, and PHP 8 support is still incomplete. That makes it useful for health-informatics teaching, where students follow a patient through departments and read the code, but not a sound place for live dental records.

FreeMED: open code, no releases

FreeMED is a free (GPL v2+) EMR and practice management system for medical offices, stewarded by the FreeMED Software Foundation. It has a scheduler, patient chart, prescriptions, lab orders, document management and US billing with CPT and ICD codes. There has been no packaged release since 0.8.4 in 2007; the Git code still gets occasional fixes, such as PHP 8.3 work in March 2026, but installation is manual and the documentation is partly outdated. It has no dental features. Pick it only to study or adapt a classic open-source EMR.

How to choose

1. Check who shares the record. If only dentists use it, choose dental practice software. If doctors, nurses and dentists share patients, an EHR makes sense.
2. Decide whether the tooth chart must be inside the EHR. If yes, GNU Health is the only free option. If a structured dental form is enough, OpenEMR or Bahmni will do, with charting kept in a dental program.
3. Match billing to your country. OpenEMR is built around US claims. Bahmni and GNU Health have their own billing but no US or UK dental claim formats.
4. Match the system to your IT capacity. OpenEMR and Bahmni deploy with Docker; GNU Health needs Linux and PostgreSQL skills. Budget for a support vendor or implementation partner if you have no in-house admin.
5. Exclude dormant or end-of-life projects for live data. Care2x, FreeMED and community OSCAR 19 do not get dependable security fixes.
6. Pilot with fictional patients. Build the dental form first, run a week of test visits, then restore a backup to a second machine before any real patient is entered.

FAQ

Is there free dental patient management software?

Yes, with limits. GNU Health is free and has a dentistry package with an odontogram. OpenEMR and Chikitsa are free but record teeth only as form fields or text. Open Dental is complete but shareware (conditionally free). See our dental practice management guide for details.

What is the best free EHR for a small clinic?

For most small clinics, OpenEMR: it is actively maintained, runs in Docker and has public demos. Outside the US, where its billing matters less, Bahmni Lite or GNU Health are also worth a trial.

OpenEMR vs OpenMRS: which should I choose?

OpenEMR is a complete practice system with scheduling and US billing. OpenMRS is a medical record platform that is usually deployed through a distribution such as Bahmni. We compare them in detail in OpenEMR vs OpenMRS (and Bahmni).

Does OpenEMR have a dental module?

No. There is no graphical tooth chart or perio chart in the core system. Dental clinics build their own encounter forms with the layout editor and add their own procedure codes; CDT codes are not included.

Is OSCAR EMR still supported?

Community OSCAR 19 is not: its maintenance and support were suspended in August 2026. OSCAR Pro is managed by WELL EMR Group, and the OSCAR Galaxy community recommends migrating to CARLOS EMR.

Is open-source EMR software HIPAA compliant?

No software is compliant by itself. OpenEMR, for example, includes access controls, audit logging and encryption options, but compliance depends on how you host, secure and operate it.

Last updated: 26 September 2026 · DentIIT editorial team. Licence, version and platform details are checked against each developer's official documentation; none of the tools listed here should be treated as a certified medical device unless its vendor says so.