openEHR Specifications Roadmap 2008

The diagram to the right shows which specifications will be created new (bold), and which will be enhanced ('+' symbol). The final column in the table indicates the form in which the specification will appear. The timings are subject to change. The authoritative, detailed version is always available under the Jira SPEC project.

The release programme here is determined by the Architectural Review Board (ARB) in consultation with the community.

AQL = Archetype Query Language

TSS = Terminology Subset Syntax

TDS = Template Data Schema

Draft materials for all the work below will usually appear earlier than indicated, with an associated wiki page.

The CEN EN13606-4 standard for role-based access control for health information will be added to the openEHR Reference Model in the form of a new Access Control specification. The current release of the RM is already designed to accept a model of access control in a plug-in fashion. This will enable the addition of other models, including more complex non-role-based standards in the future.

Q4 2008

Development

Additions to the EHR Information Model will describe a simple model of Instruction / Action threads. In EHR data, this allows an Instruction and all Actions that have occurred as a result to be 'threaded' together and seen as a history of order + actions, enabling clinicians to easily see the status of any intervention. Because Actions in openEHR encapsulate a 'state' from the openEHR state machine, the latest Action in any thread gives the current state of the Instruction.

Q4 2008

Q1 2009

Development

Trial

The current draft EHR Extract specification will be evolved to the point of a Trial Specification, and published with an XML-schema.

Q4 2008

Trial

The ADL specification will be enhanced to include semantics for defining specialised archetypes as well as templates, both already partially supported by various tools. This will result in the upgrading of the ADL specification to version 1.5.

Q2 2008

Trial

The current very rough draft of a model for Templates  will be completed to Trial status in mid 2008, providing a completely open basis (similar to ADL and XML-ADL) for building interoperable tooling around openEHR templates.

Along with the Template Object Model, a model for 'operational templates' is under development, which describes the standalone operational form of a template due to evaluating a Template Definition against the Archetype repository and terminology. Operational Templates are the close-to runtime form of a template, and are also the basis for creating Template Data Schemas (TDSs).

Wiki home page

Q3 2008

Q4 2008

Development

Trial

A standardised transformation for TDSs will commence development as a new specification in mid-2008.

Q3 2008

Q1 2009

Development

Trial

A specification for AQL will be developed based on proposals from the openEHR community.

Wiki home page.

Q3 2008

Development

The virtual EHR is an application interface that provides access to all back-end services, as well as secure session management, without the application programmer having to know the details.

Q3 2008

Development

This service is a coarse-grained model of EHR access, at the level of Compositions and other top-level objects of the EHR. It supports Contribution committal, query-based retrieval and fast index-based retrieval.

Q3 2008

Development

This service provides access to archetypes and templates based on identifier and other attributes.

Q4 2008

Development

This service provides access to versioned terminology subsets, expressed in the form of dynamic queries against terminologies such as Snomed CT, ICDx etc.

Q1 2009

Development

This is a simple service providing a cross-reference between subject identifiers and EHR identifiers. It can be used to match a subject based on one or more identifiers, and find EHRs created for them.

Q1 2009

Development