Re: HL7 too expensive, too complex and inconsistent

[Thomas Beale <thomas.beale@oceaninformatics.com>]

Stef Verlinden wrote:

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."

 

we are getting there. There is quite a lot of pressure from users now for openEHR to have a clearer governance system, and I see that as completely normal - it has grown from nothing organically over about 7 years, and now has a good governance for changes to the specifications, but not necessarily all other aspects of the organisation. Recent meetings with official SDOs and government e-health agencies are showing the way to improvements, and we can expect to see them starting very soon - particularly in the area of governance of archetypes, and Snomed bindings.

I have been travelling in Brazil for 2 weeks and there is huge openEHR activity here. At least 60 good quality archetypes are available from various organisations here for donation to the main pool. There is government interest, and actual implementation work in at least 2 vendors, as well as Tim Cook's open source Python project, which is based here. This is in addition to evaluation programmes in Sweden and Denmark and the significant ongoing work in the UK NHS. This huge increase in activity in the last 18 months has meant that quite a lot of loose ends and ambiguities are being brought up - openEHR now has to solve various challenges to make it really work for such an active community. This is what will make it grow into something serious I believe.

I hope that the community here can appreciate that putting the changes in place won't quite happen overnight, but we are working hard to make them occur in the coming months (not years). I thought we might have an interesting ride in 2001, now it looks like it is in an F18 Hornet, not the roller coaster I thought it would be.

- thomas beale