Hugh Leslie wrote: > Hi Tim > > I wish you would sit down with us and have a look at what we are doing > rather than 'be a cynical bastard'!
Well I did spend many hours corresponding with Thomas Beale and Sam Heard a few weeks ago, trying to work out where you guys were up to with implementation. Trying to get details was like trying to get blood out of the proverbial. I asked Sam Heard if I could forward messages which Thomas, he and you had sent to me in reply to the openhealth list, but Sam asked that I didn't, so instead I have done my best to accurately convey what I understood the situation was. > We have appreciated your support over > the years and I can understand your frustration, however we have been > working really hard with few resources - most of the software described > below is the product of small teams working with very small budgets. Its > only really in the last 12 months since version one was released that all > this has happened. What I find remarkable, and I think that I am not alone in this, is that for a project which has been under development for a decade or more, and which has been described and promoted at conferences, on the openEHR and other Web sites and in various papers for nearly that long, serious effort to actually build software implementations of the ideas has only taken place in the last 12 months. Clearly I am an empiricist (which is a highly forgivable trait in an epidemiologist) rather than a theoretician. However, I suspect that many others on this list share my empirical leanings. > I have included part of the text of the email I sent to you recently and > again would be happy to sit down with you and show you where we are at. OK, I'm glad you have reproduced this email because I asked you, Sam Heard and Thomas Beale whether I could forward the information to the openhealth list, Sam replied "We'd rather you didn't." > ALL > of this software was demonstrated at the Ocean stand at HIC this year, > including taking HL7v2 pathology and radiology results and storing them as > openEHR compositions in the database. > > We as a company at the moment are more concerned about having too much work > and too much interest rather than not enough. Most of this is in Europe, > and I for one am proud to be part of an Australian company that is doing > world recognised work in this area. > > "We currently have demonstrable software that: > - creates archetypes (the ocean archetype editor and a java archetype > editor). > - We can take the archetypes and create templates from them which you can > use to build gui forms using a drag and drop process. (Ocean Template > Designer) > - We have worked with clients who have taken these guis and used them to > enter data and save the data into our repository. (Ocean EhrBank) > - EhrBank is an openEHR repository which will store any archetyped data > (the ocean kernel sits on top of it providing the ability to build openEHR > objects from archetypes or templates. > - We have a query editor that allows you to build sql like queries to query > the data and we have clients in Turkey that have successfully demonstrated > this functionality for themselves. > - We have software that allows you to display data queried from the > repository in a web page. > > We also have a terminology service that is well integrated into the tools > and allows you to build pre-defined queries in snomed etc. These can then > be used in a gui to allow clinicians to select terms. > > We are not the sort of company that hypes up its wares and so Tom is being > honest with you in saying that these systems have not been tested in high > volume mission critical situations (although volume testing of the > repository is going on as we speak.) These tools have been out there being > demonstrated and tested by real clients for at least 6 months and we have > generated a lot of interest across Europe (In particular Turkey, the > Netherlands and Denmark and there is a lot of interest in the UK). > > Most of these tools have been built since openEHR v1.0 was released Hugh is referring to Version 1.0 of the openEHR specifications, not Version 1.0 of a software implementation of those specifications. > so in > fact the timelines have been particularly spectacular in my opinion > especially since we have done most of it under our own steam. We can > demonstrate the full chain that you referred to but not all of it is as > slick as we would like it yet (that said, we think its all pretty slick!) > If you were at HIC this year, you would have seen this all working at the > stand, and we have come a long way since then. > > We are definitely ready to start some small implementations and there are > opportunities in Australia as well as Europe (and the US as Sam mentioned.)" > > Apart from these things, Tom and I were invited to an eclipse meeting in > Europe recently to discuss an eclipse version of the openEHR tools and this > process is on-going. > > Regards Hugh > > I forgot to mention that there is the beginnings of an archetype repository > available from the openEHR web site and the Ocean web site. OK, thanks, but I don't see that any of this is inconsistent with my take on where you are at (reproduced below) which I posted to thsi list this morning. As I said, I would have just used your words but Sam Heard asked me not to. I look forward to getting my hands on completed and ready-to-evaluate openEHR software components. Demonstrations don't impress, I need to be able to use the software components myself, with my data, in the privacy of my server. If you are not at that stage of development, then that's OK, but don't be surprised if the epithets "glacial" and "geological" are being bandied around, given that openEHR has now been promoted to us as an imminent solution to our health data management woes for many, many years now. However, the Extensia suite sounds interesting. Let's hope it doesn't cost the earth. Tim C >> -----Original Message----- >> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tim Churches >> Sent: Thursday, 14 December 2006 8:50 AM >> To: General Practice Computing Group Talk >> Subject: Re: [GPCG_TALK] Request for XML dump for RAIL >> >> David Guest wrote: >>>> The data is identified as such and grouped in a hierarchy. But its >>>> description and constraints are entirely open and >> undefined. I guess >>>> its a useful lowest common denominator >>> Does anyone think openEHR will ever produce the goods? >> There has been correspondence on the openhealth mailing list >> regarding this issue recently. David More quipped about >> "geological timescales", perhaps with some justification. To >> summarise and paraphrase (accuratey I hope) the thread: the >> openEHR people assure us that several private firms are using >> openEHR-based systems in deployed proprietary vertical health >> apps, and that lots of profs and students in various >> universities are studying and tinkering with it. The openEHR >> specifications have been accepted as a proposed standard (but >> not ratified or approved as a standard as yet). Furthermore, >> Ocean Informatics and the openEHR Foundation are themselves >> working on a suite of tools which actually implement the >> ideas behind openEHR, but these tools are in different stages >> of completeness: tools to define and edit openEHR archetype >> definitions are complete and available as open source. Tools >> to actually store and retrieve data using openEHR archetypes >> are at alpha or beta stages in the openEHR secret laboratory, >> but have not been fully tested and are not ready for >> production use. Thomas Beale has offered access to an openEHR >> engine hosted in the Ocean Informatics labs, to be accessed >> via a proprietary Web service interface requiring the use of >> a Microsoft C# .NET DLL on the client side, for >> capability-testing purposes by interested parties (contact >> Thomas Beale at Ocean Informatics if you are interested). All >> these openEHR tools still under development may or may not be >> open sourced in the future - the Ocean Informatics and >> openEHR people need to investigate business models. Other >> parts of the openEHR puzzle, such as a shared library of >> openEHR archetype definitions, and a full query language, are >> still on the drawing board or in only early stages of >> implementation. Oh, there is also an open source version of >> an openEHR storage/retrieval kernel being written in Sweden, >> but it is not yet complete either. >> >> I asked the same questions of the Ocean Informatics and >> openEHR people in 2003, and after much email correspondence >> and head scratching, I was assured that usable, >> production-quality openEHR implementations would be available >> quite soon. The same assurances were given just a few weeks >> ago. I conclude that they are indeed a bit further along now >> with actual implementation than they were three years ago, >> but still have quite a way to go, but it is very hard to >> extrapolate the progress line to divine when it might cross >> the V1.0 boundary, although the fact that they were working >> on GEHR (the predecessor to openEHR) about 15 years ago, and >> the openEHR has been going for nearly a decade might provide >> some clues. Perhaps the remaining distance is being halved >> with every passing year? Or perhaps I am just a cynical bastard? >> >> Tim C >> _______________________________________________ >> Gpcg_talk mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk >> >> __________ NOD32 1920 (20061213) Information __________ >> >> This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. >> http://www.eset.com >> >> > _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
