Dear Andrew,
On 4-nov-2006, at 1:12, Andrew Patterson wrote: > True, but there have been some changes e.g. the quoting rules for > unicode, that have been more than cosmetic textual changes. I am just > concerned that the freedoms that openEHR has to change things > rapidly might be lost if the spec gets tied to the CEN/ISO process. This antagonism between: - the stability a formal consensus process and the need for quick responses to correct mistakes, make extensions, complete new version in the case of standards, - the need to do quick fixes and do innovative experiments with new features in the case of implementable code and specifications, is not something that has been solved. And then there is an other problem. -Nowadays the standards in medical informatics are very complex, needing several parts, depending increasingly on other standards - The texts in the standards describe specifications for complex software used by large portions of society. These texts are becoming so complex that we need colours and drawings. This results in documents that when printed on paper (as is the rule in formal standardisation organisations) are not very handy to use. Implementers prefer to read code based on the standards and not these complex unwieldy standards texts - On top of rather stable parts of the standards specification we will see an increased need for many small or large lists with codes, or even an actively changing ontology. These lists with codes are part of the standard but can not be printed or changed via the formal processes used in standardisation organisations. In addition these lists can be maintained and published only using databases. In summary we need new types of standards, standards producing mechanisms, standards publishing mechanisms and perhaps new, extra, types of standardisation organisations. For the moment, I think that all problems can be solved by co- operation between the formal standardisation organisations (like CEN and ISO) plus a supporting Open Source organisation (like OpenEHR for implementable specifications) plus not-for-profit organisation (like the European Institute for the Health Record, EuroRec for the maintenance and publication of lists of codes) I expect that in the near future we will need an extra function that will be added to the list. This is an organisation that is responsable for the testing and certification of applications that claim conformance to standards, implementable specifications and lists of codes. As many know EuroRec is executing a European project Q-REC (Quality labeling and Certification of EHR-systems) At this moment they restrict themselves to functional requirements and criteria of EHR-systems. It is inescapable that semantic interoperability and patient safety demand more attention to conformance testing of implementations that claim conformance to standards and other documents. EurRec will be the most likely candidate to organise this in Europe. Greetings, Gerard Freriks -- <private> -- Gerard Freriks, arts Huigsloterdijk 378 2158 LR Buitenkaag The Netherlands T: +31 252 544896 M: +31 653 108732 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.openehr.org/mailman/private/openehr-technical_lists.openehr.org/attachments/20061104/f45d1e89/attachment.html> -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ openEHR-technical mailing list openEHR-technical at openehr.org http://www.chime.ucl.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/openehr-technical
