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openEHR ARB Terms of Reference

Overview

The openEHR Architecture Review Board (ARB) has been established by the openEHR Foundation Executive to advise on its technical work, including deliverables, programmes of work and strategic direction. The initial membership includes four founding permanent members, two from UCL and two from Ocean Informatics.

The overall technical approach of openEHR, covering requirements, architecture, engineering and implementation, are documented in the openEHR architecture Change Management Plan (CMP), which provides a framework for the technical work programme that the ARB will manage and quality assure.

The Terms of Reference will be kept under review, as required, by the Foundation Executive, in consultation with the ARB members.

Goals

The goals of the ARB are:

  • to assure the quality of openEHR technical outputs (documents and software);
  • to guide the technical strategy of the openEHR Foundation, in keeping with its overall mission and objectives.

Core Tasks

The principal tasks of ARB members are:

  • to review draft technical deliverables
  • to provide advice and expertise on relevant parts of the technical workplan, and potential future areas of work and collaboration;
  • to ensure adequate review of all change requests (CRs) which are passed to it according to the process defined in the openEHR architecture Change Management Plan ;
  • to establish, co-ordinate and oversee technical development and review teams;

Responsibilities and Accountability

The ARB has responsibilities to the openEHR Foundation Executive, as follows:

  1. To process nominations for new members of the ARB
  2. To process all Problem Reports and Change Requests in a timely manner
  3. To inform the executive of any proposed decisions that have any financial, policy or legal implications for the openEHR Foundation. Such decisions will be subject to ratification by the openEHR Foundation Executive.
  4. To provide a quarterly report of activities to the Foundation Executive. This report may be, by and large, automatically generated by software tools or other available means to minimise the work.
  5. To aim to hold at least one physical meeting a year.

Rules

Membership

The ARB consists of a number of permanent members appointed by the Foundation Executive (initially 4), as well as invited members who accept the position and its Terms of Reference. The ARB is intended to grow to up to around 12 members. The membership rules are as follows:

  1. All members of the ARB must be members of openEHR[1] and agree to its mission and objectives and to the ARB Terms of Reference
  2. Invitations are made through a letter from the Chair of the Foundation Executive, on the basis of nominations received.
  3. All invited appointments are for 12 months, and are renewable.
  4. All nominations of new members must be supported by at least two existing members of the ARB.

Members of the ARB may:

  1. vote on new nominations for ARB membership
  2. access the ARB’s private mailing list and any other materials, documents etc used for conducting the business of the ARB
  3. raise new problem reports and change requests (in common with the rest of the openEHR community)
  4. suggest strategic changes or enhancements to the technical direction of openEHR
  5. suggest changes to the way the ARB is run.

Members of the ARB are expected to:

  1. Remain up-to-date with the deliverables of the openEHR Technical Projects (as defined in the CMP)
  2. Be responsive in discussions relating to processing CRs
  3. Take part in votes on all new memberships, and on the election of a chair and secretary
  4. Take part in any vote (decided by simple majority) which is used to resolve a CR issue which has not been resolved in some other way
  5. Inform the ARB if there is any change in their status, institution, or activities which means they can no longer agree to the Terms of Reference of the ARB, and/or openEHR’s mission. Members in this situation must resign.

Special Positions

Each year the ARB will, by simple majority, elect a Chair and Secretary from among the elected members.

The responsibilities of the Chair are:

  1. to ensure the ARB fulfils its responsibilities to the Foundation Executive, according to these Terms of Reference;
  2. to organise and conduct physical meetings;
  3. to conduct any necessary voting, at meetings or by electronic means.

The responsibilities of the secretary are to generate the quarterly ARB report to the Foundation Executive, to convene agreed meetings, to produce and distribute minutes and the results of voting.

ARB Experts

The ARB may co-opt advisory experts when appropriate, to complement the existing expertise and capacity of the ARB in a specific area. The rules relating to experts are:

  1. The ARB elects (by simple majority) to co-opt an individual with specific expertise, for a particular task
  2. An ARB Expert retains the status for a period of up to 12 months, which may be renewed.
  3. ARB Experts do not have voting rights on the ARB
  4. ARB experts have access to some or all of the ARB’s private materials, as appropriate

Processes

CR and PR Processing

This is the main business of the ARB.

  1. Problem Reports and Change Requests are to be processed according to the openEHR Change Management Plan (CMP).
  2. Not all PRs and CRs have to be processed by the ARB. However, all PRs and CRs are automatically notified to the ARB via the private mailing list.
  3. The ARB Chair must ensure that processing of each PR and CR whose owner field is “ARB� has commenced within one month of the date it was raised.
  4. A member of the ARB must become the manager of a PR or CR before changes can occur. This can occur by self-nomination or nomination by the ARB Chair.
  5. The manager of a CR or PR is responsible for progressing it through its lifecycle, even if he/she does not do any analysis or technical work on it. The manager proceeds according to the detailed process defined in the CMP.

Physical Meetings

Physical meetings are used for various purposes, including:

  • To allow members to get to know each other
  • To discuss functioning of the ARB
  • To discuss the technical direction of openEHR
  • To deal with unresolved technical problems
  • To vote on matters requiring a vote at the point in time when the meeting occurs (i.e. meetings do not need to be called for the purpose of voting)

Robert’s rules will be used for running meetings.

[1]by having subscribed to the discussion fora via the openEHR web site

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