Not trying to start a war, but I am disappointed at the continued dialog
that is negative toward HL7. If, in fact, openEHR has solved all of the
problems of interoperability and is being picked up around the world, I,
and I think, many of my HL7 colleagues will be delighted. Very few of the
members of HL7 make money from HL7, so I think our motivations are driven
by our companies and the market place. Solving the problems of
interoperability will certainly open the door for many more important
accomplishments. I hope archetypes are engaged by the clinical community
and help us make a key step forward. However, there are still hurdles to
be overcome before we have systems working together. Let's join forcesa
and publicize successes in a demonstratable way. Whether HL7 or openEHR, I
think one's success is the others success.
W. Ed Hammond, Ph.D.
Director, Duke Center for Health Informatics
Thomas Beale
<thomas.beale at oce
aninformatics.com To
> openehr-technical at openehr.org
Sent by: cc
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l.ac.uk Re: Interoperability with HL7
02/01/2010 10:33
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>
Based on Charlie's reply, maybe my own was not clear. openEHR is mostly not
about solving the problem of openEHR systems talkng to each other (that is
rare at this stage, as you might imagine; when it happens, there is not
much problem to solve, obviously - openEHR is a single data standard), but
in fact solving normal interoperability problems with other systems and
formats. Connecting to HL7v2 messages, HL7v3 messages (these seem to be
pretty rare so far, apart from the UK and Canada) and CDA documents, other
formats like text, PDF, proprietary data structures, but also the IHE
framework, Microsoft CHF services framework.... all this is already
happening in the openEHR world. The main point is _how_ it is done. Instead
of manually building a message specification for say 'microbiology', the
openEHR approach is as follows:
build or source archetypes, like you can see at
http://www.openEHR.org/knowledge e.g. see Apgar at
http://www.openehr.org/knowledge/OKM.html#showArchetype_1013.1.172
create templates from the archetypes for use-case specific use
from templates we create various computable artefacts - such as
template-based message schemas (XSD) and template-based programming
objects.
template-based message schemas are used to implement messages, either
as an integration solution, or as an end-to-end solution
template-based programming objects are used to enable integration
with existing applications
all querying done with AQL or other archetype-path based languages,
which enable portable, semantic querying for all data represented in
openEHR format.
This singe-source semantic modelling approach is visualised at
http://www.openehr.org/160-OE/version/default/part/ImageData/data/single_source_models.jpg
. I would go so far as to say that the age of hand-built messages will be
over soon - it won't make people in HL7 happy I guess, but the technology
is now beyond that approach, and firmly in the arena of model-driven
content and SOA infrastructure.
The final standardisation within openEHR of the templates and
template-related artefacts are happening at the moment, based on the last
couple of years' experience with this technology within some of the
commercial openEHR vendors. Our experience of archetype-based querying has
been extremely successful, in both EHR and population modes. Querying is
one of the weakest areas in the published standards, yet it is probably the
single most important factor in the use and re-use of data in health.
Having a comprehensive and semantically solid querying approach is
therefore crucial for useful interoperability (after all there is not much
point moving data somewhere else, or transforming it if you still can't
query it properly). We believe that the combined power of archetype-based
templates and archetype-based querying will become a major advance for the
field of health informatics, along with the emerging openEHR service
infrastructure.
- thomas beale
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