On 29/01/2010 07:41, Alberto Moreno Conde wrote: > I would like to address the interoperability with the HL7 standards. > As I understand it is possible to map between OpenEHR to HL7 CDA, this > allows us to create systems that are based on the openEHR reference > model compatible HL7. This system would be able to send HL7 v2 and HL7 > v3 messages from the CDA and EHR_EXTRACTS from the OpenEHR reference > model. > > I don't understand what consequences have that the HL7 RIM is still > not fully compatible with the OpenEHR reference model if we can send > messages from HL7 CDA. > > Is there other problems in the interoperability between HL7 and OpenEHR? > > I hope that Thanks > > Alberto * > *
Hi Alberto, In practical terms, performing mapping between HL7v2 messages and openEHR, and also CDA and openEHR is certainly possible. It takes some work - the complexity of the HL7 RIM doesn't make it that easy for CDA or other v3-based structures. In a theoretical sense, the key thing to understand is that in HL7 there is a pervasive approach of restriction-based modelling - in the RIM, the data-types, and all *MIMs. In this kind of modelling, abstract classes have numerous attributes, in theory all that would ever be needed, and descendant classes are defined as restrictions of the parents. You will have noted for example that the Act class in the RIM has 22 attributes, and the Act-relationship class 18. I won't go into the problems that this causes, but there is one other key fact to note: the RIM classes contain a mixture of domain information related attributes and message-related attributes. However, if your interest is not hand-building messages, it can be hard to see past these attributes to get a pure domain model of the concept in question, e.g. cholesterol test result, or whatever. This is one of the reasons CDA has become popular, because it is a more generic, less message-oriented RMIM than other message types. It nevertheless contains the same fine-grained (level 3) concepts as the RIM, albeit in a restricted form. At a more concrete level of analysis, you need to compare the reference models. The openEHR reference model is a standard OO style of modelling, and has been heavily influenced by the development of archetypes over the years. It now appears to accommodate most clinical models pretty naturally and has been very stable for nearly 3 years. It contains useful structures like history-of-events, various design patterns for referencing demographic entities, a generalised state machine for instructions and activities, and a comprehensive model of distributed versioning. In terms of solving practical interoperability problems, the above analytic comparisons have been useful in implementing the required transformations. If you can provide more detail on the problem you are trying to solve, I could probably describe more detailed and relevant points of comparison. - thomas beale -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.openehr.org/mailman/private/openehr-technical_lists.openehr.org/attachments/20100131/f55e26b9/attachment.html>
