I have updated the wiki page at http://www.openehr.org/wiki/display/spec/openEHR+Templates+and+Specialised+Archetypes to explain the changes in the specifications due to the move to 'proper' openEHR specification of the 'template' notion, and the related changes to ADL and the AOM, particularly to do with specialisation and a higher level of formality. The wiki page is not yet finished, but explains in quite a lot of detail all the new elements, changes, and some analysis of impact on current tools and archetypes.
The specification work is not yet complete, but should now be a matter of weeks. A few remaining issues need input from the implementer community (suggest that any such low-level implementation discussions are held on the implementers list); once these are resolved, the ADL 1.5 and AOM specifications can be finalised. Everything reported on the wiki page (apart from one exception which is noted) is already implemented in the reference archetype compiler and appears to semantically validate well. A new release of this tool will be made in the next few days, in order to help the community see better the new semantics and validation capability. The template specification is evolving to consist of small additions to the revamped ADL 1.5 specifications. It is not finished, but also should not take too much longer, as 85% of the semantics originally specified for templates have now been included in the upgraded ADL / AOM specifications. The process for the short term will be to get these specifications to a state where they are validated by implementation (as per the usual openEHR mantra;-) and presentable to the ARB, which will process them formally. The current proposal is to make this work Release 1.1 of openEHR. This work will enable archetypes being built within the Clinical Knowledge Manager (http://www.openehr.org/knowledge/) to evolve fairly quickly to the new form, and therefore be more maintainable and validatable. All feedback is welcome. - thomas beale
