Hi Sam and all, I would like to add some newbie questions and also give some feedback on the openEHR website and information I found so far - really as an absolute newbie. My background: I'm a software engineer living and working in China now for almost 3 years, using a lot of open source software and components; I don't have a medical background.
A while ago I was searching the web for open source EHR systems, which have a solid basis, not hacked, a good (preferably 'scientific') backing and supportive community. Beside OpenEHR I also came across two other systems (openMRS, Tolven), of which I also looked at openMRS closer. I read about the architecture, checked out both openMRS and openEHR projects from SVN, and I built both projects (java implementation) successfully. Also installed at the Ocean archetype tools. Now for an absolute newbie I'd like to say: after reading (some of) the openEHR documents, it got clear to me what openEHR is about and how it can be used. But before I read them, just trying to gather the most important information from the website (by evaluating a suitable system), it didn't get clear to me at a first glance that openEHR is actually not a ready-to-go EHR system, but more a specification. Of course after a while I got to know it, but I was still wondering and in search of some kind of reference implementation for a whole system. Let's say, like after I've built the openMRS project, I could login to something, see and feel a real application. I was in search of something similar among the openEHR subprojects. Just a small sample application, not expecting a fully featured EHR system. Now -- I understand the purpose of openEHR specification, and I know that it's 'just' a specification and it shouldn't be fixed to any concrete implementation, but I am wondering, since I assume that somebody in the community is actually using openEHR in real-life-applications, it seems there's no such thing like the famous 'pet store' reference implementation that Sun is using to demonstrate their JEE specification. For example I am wondering about best-practice persistence management for templates/archetypes. Of course, EHR systems and their requirements differ and developers favour different technologies, some use rich clients, some use web clients (maybe some systems don't even have a client and just serve as middleware), some use a SOA approach, some use relational db, some use pure XML dbs, some hibernate/ejb, and so on and so on.... To sum it up, I am wondering (or it seems to me) that there is hardly any discussion about real system implementation regarding such things like persistence in the mailing list, or somebody who has actually built a real app, that could be used by newbies to start from. For example, I think most (client-based) EHR systems will have core features like user management, basic demographics management. It would be helpful to learn how such things like demographics are actually implemented in a real system (just as an example, of course the ways to implement are endless). Or how a GUI is built (how it can be generated from templates/archetypes?). A lot of questions I assume lot of people in the community already dealt with in their real-life implementations). I learned that Greg Caulton has implemented some openEHR support into his patientOS solution. I am wondering, are there any other open source 'real app' projects, that are built upon the openEHR specification from ground up, or is there such 'Sun's pet-store' sub project planned? Will the java implementation project extend any further, or will have a subproject? You see, as a newbie I have some best-practice questions, but I didn't want to bother the mailing list with it. I can imagine, lot of newbies - also like Juan - have similar questions. So I just wanted to add my feedback to this thread as well, maybe it's helpful. Mathias -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/How-to-start-an-application-with-openEHR-tp18247023p19457289.html Sent from the openehr-technical mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
