Re: poor version management in archetype editor

["Ian McNicoll" <Ian.McNicoll@oceaninformatics.com>]

Hi William,

I would agree that some sort of versioning/ rollback facility is a definite requirement. The only issue is whether this is best achieved within the Archetype Editor itself, or by a separate, purpose designed utility.

As Richard and Karsten have suggested, Subversion has proved an excellent tool for this purpose and the NHS have their version management and configuration working extremely well. 

Richard, I am sure there would be considerable interest in knowing more about the CfH/NHS approach.

One of the downsides to Subversion is the need to install and configure the  server software, which though not particularly difficult, does require some technical skills. I have successfully used Unfuddle www.unfuddle.com for personal and professional hosted Subversion support. There are both low-cost and no-cost options available. This is particularly valuable for team-based modelling. The subversion Tortoise client is easy to use and once a few simple operational rules are estabished, it is pretty easy for users to pick up the various update and commit operations required.

An alternative approach is used by the Clinical Knowledge Manager http://www.openehr.org/knowledge/ where the revisioning and re-versioning and version control is handled internally, though actual archetype editing is currently handed off to the archetype editor via a download/checkout process

There is quite a bit of work being done on clarifying other governance requirements, in particular publisher identifiiers and revision numbers (which are not currently supported by the archetype editor) and this should be coming out quite soon.

There is also an interesting philosophical question! 

Part of the reason for the lack of inbuilt version management is that archetypes can be seen as software artefacts i.e programming code, gnerally now managed by within a version control environment, as opposed to human requirements documents, which tend to have support for the version within the filename/file itself. The strength of the archetype approach is that they are BOTH software artefacts AND human information requirements documents, and perhaps we need to reflect this duality in our approach to version control.

Ian
 

Dr Ian McNicoll
office / fax  +44(0)141 560 4657
mobile +44 (0)775 209 7859
skype ianmcnicoll
ian@mcmi.co.uk

Clinical Analyst - Ocean Informatics ian.mcnicoll@oceaninformatics.com

Member of BCS Primary Health Care Specialist Group – www.phcsg.org

2008/11/28 Richard Kavanagh (NHS Connecting for Health) <richard.kavanagh@nhs.net>

A combination of a good version management tool and an internal configuration management policy works well for us, I would be happy to discuss this with others.

 

We use subversion as our version management tool and find it indispensible for us.. I would be interested to hear what other archetype/template authors use for their configuration management.

 

regards

Richard Kavanagh
Head of Interoperability Specifications
Data Standards and Products
NHS Connecting for Health
Tel : +44 (0)113 397 4398
Mob : +44 (0)7770 644449
Richard.Kavanagh@nhs.net
www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk

NHS Connecting for Health supports the NHS in providing better, safer care by delivering computer systems and services which improve the way patient information is stored and accessed.

 

---

From: openehr-clinical-bounces@openehr.org [mailto:openehr-clinical-bounces@openehr.org] On Behalf Of Williamtfgoossen@cs.com
Sent: 28 November 2008 08:38
To: openehr-clinical@openehr.org
Subject: poor version management in archetype editor

Dear all,

Currently underway in making archetypes using the Ocean archetype editor we encounter a major flaw in the tool.

It is impossible to maintain version management, which leads to many inconsistencies in the archetypes.

Also, while participating in the review of archetypes such as blood pressure, the old (before review) and the new (after review) have the same version.

I think this is a very urgent matter to solve, otherwise we will end up with heaps of archetypes on the same subject that are different.

In particular a requirement is that an author, while developing, is able to have a versioning structure that allows going back to earlier versions, or work on improvements while not changing an existing version directly.

In other words: missing versioning is making it hard to produce archetypes.

Sincerely yours,

dr. William TF Goossen
director
Results 4 Care b.v.
De Stinse 15
3823 VM Amersfoort
the Netherlands
email: Results4Care@cs.com
phone + 31654614458
fax +3133 2570169
www.results4care.nl
Dutch Chamber of Commerce number: 32133713

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