Randolph Neall wrote: > We develop physician practice management software, so far without electronic > medical records. I have been following with interest the discussion here. We > need a more basic orientation. > > Does anyone know of a basic resource--a book or extended document--that > would provide an overview of how practically to implement something like > OpenEhr in terms of database design in a practice management system, and, > for that matter explain the OpenEhr concept itself? Everything I've seen so > far assumes too much prior knowledge. > > We operate in the United States. To what extent is OpenEhr in practical use > in Europe? Hospitals only? Private practices? > > Randolph Neall > Veriquant, LLC > > > > THere is an architecture overview at http://svn.openehr.org/specification/TRUNK/publishing/architecture/overview.pdf which you may or may not have seen. This is not an implementation guide, but will give you a feel for most of the principles of openEHR.
We don't yet have an implementation guide. The community is aimed creating open source components that implement large parts of openEHR, so that you don't have to implement it, you can just use it. These are not yet finished, although there are working versions in Java and C#. The most efficient way forward for a potential user such as your company is to understand what the APIs of these components are. These are not yet published, but we have a pretty good idea of them from the implementations so far (which can be shared of course, if you are interested). There are also XML-schemas, which are probably the easiest entry point into openEHR (see http://svn.openehr.org/specification/TRUNK/publishing/its/XML-schema/index.html). What language are you working in? openEHR is extremely generic and provides a computing platform for use in any health environment; applications and archetypes provide the specific functionality and semantics in any particular situation. It is new (well, only about 8 years old;-) so its current use is small, but it is quickly growing. - thomas beale -- ___________________________________________________________________________________ CTO Ocean Informatics (http://www.OceanInformatics.biz) Research Fellow, University College London (http://www.chime.ucl.ac.uk) Chair Architectural Review Board, openEHR (http://www.openEHR.org)
