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Re: HL7 too expensive, too complex and inconsistent
Hi Bert,
I just had a quick scan of the report but read the parts on HL7 and
openEHR carefully.
There are two issues I want to comment on:
1) In the HL7 part it says nearly half of the assessed end-users are
using HL7 (version not mentioned but it must be v2.x) and more
importantly 90% of respondents envisages HL7 to be important in future.
That implies a big plus for HL7.
2) The major issue is the focus on open source in openEHR part. The
report seriously lacks the main philosophy of openEHR here! openEHR is
all about open systems - not just open source (although is the case as
in other domains). I am not going to write long on these two paradigms
here but as a research fellow on open systems I feel kind of responsible
to put few words on it ;)
Open Systems vs. Open Source: The former is a broader concept which is
an effort to enable different IT systems to talk to each other without
much external effort and also have the capability of running on
different platforms; whereas the latter is all about making source code
of software publicly available and let other developers to read, change,
share and run the software without any limitations (in most cases
without any charge).
Open Systems requires us to conform to relevant open standards (such as
open specs of openEHR) and have publicly available and well documented
descriptions for interfaces, behaviour and file formats. As can be
inferred, it is perfectly possible to build open systems by using
closed-source. But “openness” is not an all or nothing paradigm here;
there are levels. By using open source in developing open systems one
may ensure a higher degree of “openness”.
I will try to read more of the report - but "open systems" should be the
main focus. It is is a buzzword which I think may attract more vendors
and result in widespread implementations.
Cheers,
--
Koray Atalag, MD, Ph.D
Clinton Bedogni Research Fellow
The University of Auckland,
Department of Computer Science,
Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
Tel: +64 (9) 373 7599 ext. 87199
Fax: +64 (9) 308 2377
Email: koray@cs.auckland.ac.nz
Bert Verhees wrote:
Says the European Commission
(report:)
http://www.ebusiness-watch.org/studies/special_topics/2007/documents/Special-study_01-2008_ICT_health_standards.pdf
(sorry previous was the bad english)
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