openEHR CIMI Page

Owned by Thomas Beale
Last updated: 17-Apr-2012

Introduction

This page is the openEHR access point for visitors from the Clinical Information Modelling Initiative (CIMI), led by Dr Stan Huff (Intermountain Health).

The Clinical Information Modelling Initiative is an international collaboration that is dedicated to providing a common format for detailed specifications for the representation of health information content so that semantically interoperable information may be created and shared in health records, messages and documents.

Following a meeting held in London in December, 2011, CIMI's initial public statement announcing the agreed principles, approach and participating organisations can be found here.

The official CIMI home page is here.

NEW

  • 02 Apr 2012 - 'openEHR CIMI v1' model - A first cut openEHR 2.x flavoured core model + XMIs for CIMI - T Beale

FAQs

What is the relationship between the openEHR archetype specifications and the CEN / ISO 13606-2 standard?

  • in 2006, openEHR provided a snapshot copy of its ADL 1.2 specification and the corresponding AOM specification. Sometime in 2007, an updated snapshot of the 1.4 version of ADL and AOM were provided. These were incorporated into the CEN 13606-2 standard that was later made ISO 13606-2. Since these snapshots, individuals, companies and universities (see who's using it) have continued to work on archetypes. The current state of the work is reported on this page.

Why do we need an update to the published standard?

  • the standard corresponds to the state of knowledge from about mid 2007. Since then over 4 years' real world experience has been gained. One important development has been the advent of the openEHR Clinical Knowledge Manager (CKM), an online model management portal, and the growth of online archetype authoring. Many lessons have been learned from industry use of archetypes. The 1.4 vintage of the specifications has proven to be solid, and are largely still in use today. However, they contain a couple of errors, and do not properly support sustainable authoring of specialised archetypes, nor do they define templates. The 1.5 vintage of the specifications address these and many other needs. This table lists the changes and additions.

What is the status of the 1.5 specifications?

  • The ADL and AOM 1.5 specifications are classified 'trial' at the moment. They are not yet complete, so it is a good point in time for CIMI participants to be involved.
  • A few remaining details are still being sorted out. These are clearly marked in the specifications with 'TBD' paragraphs. The requirements not yet specified or implemented are listed as TDO in this table.

Does any of this ADL/AOM 1.5 stuff work?

  • nearly all of the 1.5 changes have been implemented in a reference compiler and test archetypes over the last 2 years. The compiler is available in the ADL Workbench, a free, open source tool.
  • ADL/AOM are designed to be backwardly compatible with ADL 1.4 archetypes. The ADL Workbench is used to convert ADL 1.4 archetypes to ADL 1.5 format, including various serialisations, including XML, JSON, and YAML.

How do you test ADL/AOM 1.5?

  • there are numerous test archetypes, which are designed to exercise every validity condition in the AOM 1.5 specification, and every path through the validation stages of the compiler. The test archetypes can be compiled in a regression test mode, described here.

The reference compiler is in Eiffel. I want a Java / C# / Python / Ruby / other implementation.

  • Java: The AOM 1.4 Java classes and ADL parser are being updated right now to ADL/AOM 1.5. We expect to have an ADL 1.5 parser (but no full compiler) and AOM 1.5 classes around end Jan 2012.
  • Java: in parallel with the above, Seref Arikan's Bosphorus project is making the Eiffel compiler available as a managed web service, via Google Protocol Buffers and ZeroMQ. Initial tests have been performed, and it appears that a detailed API will be visible in an online service early 2012.
  • Ruby: we know that the Ruby implementation is being updated to 1.5 as well.
  • C#.Net: the .Net AOM classes are being updated to AOM 1.5.

OK, but how does ADL/AOM 1.5 measure up against CIMI requirements?

  • The list of requirements developed during CIMI discussions is here. Our assessment of how ADL/AOM 1.4 and 1.5 fare against this list is given in this spreadsheet.

What is the process for change? How can problems with the current drafts be raised?

  • You can raise an issue on the JIRA issue tracker for openEHR specifications, although discussion within CIMI may make more sense initially. The governance approach for these specifications from CIMI's point of view has not yet been formalised, but clearly some key members of CIMI will need input into the process going forward.

Resources

Reference model resources

There are various expressions of the Reference model.

For proposed changes that would work for CIMI:

UML Resources

UML resources relevant to CIMI:

  • Online UML - release 1.0.1 RM - this is currently the primary online UML, although it is out of date, due to being release 1.0.1, and also based on a very old version of MagicDraw.
  • Release 1.0.2 UML resources page with XMI 2.x files - this is a redevelopment of the reference model in a new UML tool, with up to date XMI files available.
  • proposed updates to RM

The Archetype Specifications

The ADL/AOM 1.5 specifications for openEHR archetypes and templates are explained and linked here.

Notes:

  • the specifications are currently in the existing openEHR format. The publishing format will change as a result of the current governance review, and the change process will most likely change as well.