openEHR Specification Project
Release 1.0 - "Reference Model"
Release Notes

Overview

This publication constitutes Release 1.0 of the openEHR specification project, also known as the "reference model" release. The release has benefited from 3 years of use of earlier releases of the specifications, including significant implementations. The primary aim of Release 1.0 is to provide the definitive stable statement of the reference model. From the point of view of software developers, Release 1.0 is a stable set of specifications for software development into the future. Due to the separation of the reference model from archetypes in openEHR, we expect that the reference model will indeed remain extremely stable from this point on, since all clinical and other domain specific semantics are modelled within archetypes, templates and terminology. Various change management rules will now come into effect (see below) in order to minimise the effect of changes, and to enable the widest possible community input.

Public Comment Period

There will be a 3 month public comment period from early February 2006 when Release 1.0 is published. During this period, the specifications will be marked as being for public comment. There is in fact nothing different about this period - all of the release and change management rules described below apply from 01/Feb/2006. However, the front cover of each document will be marked as being in the "public comment" period, to a) encourage scrutiny during this period, and b) to differentiate the documents from the form that will be published on 1 May 2006. The main reason for the public comment period is to give the openEHR community a chance to find errors in the documents, and to ask for improvements to explanatory text and diagrams. After this period, all input continues to be welcomed as per the normal process.

Feedback should generally be made via the openEHR Technical mailing list (openehr-technical@openehr.org; subscribe here).

Is the Release safe to use during this period?

Yes. From the release date, the only things that will change are a) errors in the models will be corrected and b) explanatory text improved. This is no different from the change management situation going into the future. The only difference between the documents during and after the public comment period is that the "public comment" marker  will be removed from the front page graphic on 1 May.

Functional Improvements in this Release

The following is a list of major improvements in Release 1.0 over previous releases:
During the work on this release, over 50 CRs were processed, with some 40 being implemented. The Change History lists CRs that have been implemented in each release. Changes slated for the future are indicated in the To Do list.

Obtaining the Release Materials

You can access all deliverables in the release from the roadmap page, just by clicking on links. To get the entire release as a web tree, follow the instructions on how to use Subversion to do this.

What is the status of specifications in this Release?

Almost all of the specifications are in their intended state in this release. Work remains on a couple, and there are still of course more change requests (CRs) to process for future releases. The table below indicates the status of deliverables as of this release. See the roadmap for the descriptions of deliverables.

Deliverable

Status

Comments

General
Introducing openEHR Stable
CM Plan Stable

Requirements
ISO TS 18308 Conformance Stable

Architecture
Architecture Overview Stable This is a new document containing some content from the old "roadmap" document as well as new content describing the key semantics of the openEHR reference model.
Modelling Guide Stable
Terminology Stable

Reference Model
EHR IM Stable
EHR Extract IM Under
Redevelopment		 The EHR Extract Information Model has to be redeveloped due to changes in semantics in the other models, including the Folder structure, version identification and so on. It is scheduled
for Release 1.1
Demographic IM Stable
Common IM Stable
Data Structures IM Stable
Data Types IM Stable
Support IM Stable
Integration IM Draft

Archetype Model
Archetype Principles Stable
Archetype Definition
Language 1.3 (ADL)		 Stable ADL 1.3 remains the current ADL syntax in use, and most current tools only process ADL 1.3. Some improvements that were done as part of the ADL 2 work will be reverse-engineered into ADL 1.3 in the near future; these are mainly to do with pathing.
Archetype Definition
Language 2.0
(ADL2)		 Draft ADL version 2.0 is an improved syntax for expressing archetypes, and is has two important
features over ADL 1.3: it is extensible without the syntax needing to be changed, because in ADL2,  an archetype is a dADL document; and due to being in dADL/embedded cADL  format, it can more easily be converted to and from XML.
The current version of this specification has not yet been fully implemented or tested. Implementors of this specification should consider engineering backwards compatibility for ADL 1.3 in their tools.
Archetype Object
Model (AOM)		 Stable
Template Object Model (TOM) Forthcoming The templates document has been partially completed and will be included in Release 1.1.
openEHR Archetype Profile (OAP) Stable
Archetype System Under
Redevelopment

Computable
UML computable form of model Forthcoming The UML model of the openEHR RM has not yet been upgraded fom 0.95. It is also awaiting a new version of the UML tool (MagicDraw) that can generate error-free XML-schemas and Java & C# skeletons.
Terminology as an XML file Forthcoming

ITS
XML schemas Draft The XML-schemas are undergoing testing in various places.
Java ITS Guide Stable

Future Release Strategy

Management of future releases is described in the roadmap.
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