Re: HL7 too expensive, too complex and inconsistent
Koray Atalag schreef: > 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. > Yes, that is true, but the report also mentions that the standard will not be followed properly, because of its complexity, and that is also experienced in the previous versions of 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 ;) > It is a widely spread misunderstanding that OpenEHR is open source. It i an open specification, with implementations which are some open source, some partly open source, and some closed source. > 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”. > There is still a lot to do before OpenEHR will be truly an open system, at this moment it is an open specification. There is lack of published and standardized API's. I am going having standarized Java API, but that is on anther level. I guess this is everywhere the situation, we are all inventing the API by ourselves. This is a disadvantage of not having the specification completed. I don't know if this has changed in 1.0.2, I wait for the definite version, before I read it (too busy) Thanks for commenting on this Bert