Skip to Navigation | Skip to Content

openEHR-Clinical mailing list archives

[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: HL7 too expensive, too complex and inconsistent


Dear Ed,

I think Bert referred to the text below, but that’s not the point.

(p.21) "High adoption costs in SMEs: Small or medium-sized ICT manufacturers may not be willing to adopt commonly used standards because these are very complex and thus difficult and expensive to implement. This applies for example to HL7 version 3. It may be less costly to develop proprietary standards on their own." 

The point is that this is an official EU report, which will influence governments in (at least) the national EU states as well as the EU government themselves.

Although I agree with many of the comments of the other responders, this report is a 'fact' for those decision makers, at least until some new 'official' report show up that states something different.

In my opinion the follow passage is important for the people on this list:

"Nearly all interviewees agreed that there is a lack of widely used e-health standards. There was also agreement that there is a lack of sufficiently developed e-health standards, a lack of e-health standards harmonisation activities, and that there are too many conflicting e-health standards."

The message I read is that we have to harmonize quickly between those standards that are conflicting. Only then the 'market' can reach it's full potential. Personally I think DCM could play a role to speed up this process.

For 'us' the following recommendation in the report is a big plus: 

(p.65) 'Consider open standards: Use of open standards may further strengthen collaboration and adoption. For example, in the SeBW e-health expert survey, 64% of the respondents were of the opinion that openEHR should be important in the future (see section 3.2.2 for survey results and section 2.3.8 for details about openEHR). Moving towards open standards in e-health may gain more support in the foreseeable future due to the increasing demands of participation and support in the standards development process. It can be considered as one possible model for sustainable international standards development.'

To become an even stronger open standard organization 'we' have to work on the perception that the outside world has about openEHR. As a member I know that we fulfill to all the requirements listed in this report (see below), but for one or another reason we haven't been able to bring this across to the outside world. So please, besides all the excellent work we're doing on open standards, let's work on that too (the PR thing J ). 

"… for (openEHR) to become a success model, several issues have to be addressed, for example to assure that all members are trustworthy and participate without hidden agendas or that committee leaders are appointed in an open process reflecting the interests of all stakeholders. Objectives that need to be fulfilled include verifiable results, i.e. solutions that do not discriminate any player. Furthermore, sustainable management models must be established to assure the survival of such activities."

 
Cheers,
 
Stef







Op 3-dec-2008, om 4:30 heeft William E Hammond het volgende geschreven:

Thanks to Bert in bring this article to our attention.  Although I haven't
read every word, I did not see the reference that HL7 was too expensive.
To my knowledge, HL7 is the most widely used standard by the large HIS/IT
vendors.  I think some of the references to v2.x vs v3 were interesting.
It is true that v3 has yet to penetrate the US as far as messaging is
concerned.  On the other hand, CDA - also a v3 standard is gaining
increasing use in the US.  A number of health care facilities are using CDA
to define notes/summaries in a number of clinical domains.

The discussion of open, open source, and openess is quite interesting.  I
believe that HL7 is open in the sense that anyone can particiapte in
creating the standards.  It is closed in the sense that the standards it
creates have a price, altho relative low.  HL7 look at integrating true
open source into is structure and finally decided the gains were not worth
the effort.  I participate in a couple of open source organizations, and
the openess is quite interesting, surprising and challenging.

I think the article is an excellent reference.  I disagree with some
statements about HL7, but I doubt if anyone could write an article that
everyone would agree with all the content.

Ed Hammond



             Koray Atalag                                                  
             <koray@cs.aucklan                                             
             d.ac.nz>                                                   To 
             Sent by:                  For openEHR clinical discussions    
             openehr-clinical-         <openehr-clinical@openehr.org>      
             bounces@openehr.o                                          cc 
             rg                                                            
                                                                   Subject 
                                       Re: HL7 too expensive, too complex  
             12/02/2008 09:10          and inconsistent                    
             PM                                                            


             Please respond to                                             
                For openEHR                                                
                 clinical                                                  
                discussions                                                
             <openehr-clinical                                             
               @openehr.org>                                               






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



Bert Verhees wrote:
Says the European Commission

(report:)



(sorry previous was the bad english)


_______________________________________________
openEHR-clinical mailing list



_______________________________________________
openEHR-clinical mailing list

_______________________________________________
openEHR-clinical mailing list