Hi All Thanks for taking note of my work. There certainly was an appetite for change amongst the HL7 meeting gathered in San Diego. However there is a long way go yet; it's not clear that we can solve the problems that must be solved in order to make RFH a serious proposal for change to HL7; as yet some of these things are just a twinkle in someone's eyes. I think they can be solved, but the cake hasn't been eaten yet. And even if all these problems can be solved, we do not yet have a feel for what kind of change would be required.
In the meantime, the RFH model has some features not to everybody's liking - or perhaps I should say, everybody will find something in RFH not to their liking. (http://www.healthintersections.com.au/?p=470) RFH, for instance, has no concept of polymorphism, which will be a struggle for some. (well, not none, but much reduced) I think for now, people should feel welcome to join the debate on the wiki (you can watch it's changes from here: http://www.healthintersections.com.au/wiki/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&feed=atom) and be patient to see how things develop - there's no point rushing off in a hurry at this stage of the process. Grahame > At the HL7 meeting last week in San Diego, Grahame Grieve presented > something called Resources for Healthcare (RFH), essentially a replacement > model for much of HL7v3, for 'practical use'. The driver was the well-known > over-complexity of HL7v3. According to his report on the reception of RFH at > the HL7 meeting, there appears to be a real appetite for change at HL7, > which is good to see. > > Within RFH, Grahame has proposed a new data types model.? In practical terms > this will presumably mean that implementations directly based on the RIM and > 21090, and particularly the creation of RIM/21090 data instances will see > much reduced use in the future. From the point of view of openEHR and 13606 > this represents some positive possibilities for bridging implementations in > the future, and maybe finally solving the 'logjam' in health informatics > standards. > > Things to note about the RFH data types: > > They use orthodox object modelling rather than the subtractive modelling / > profiling approach used to date HL7. > They define a very lean set of semantics (so far). > > These two together mean that for the first time, HL7 data types (if that is > what RFH data types become) can be extended in the normal OO sense, rather > than having to be 'profiled' (creating N variants, all non-interoperable > with each other). Interoperability can potentially now be found by > connecting to the core definitions, even if it can't directly be found with > more complex extensions of the core types. > > They incorporate a lot of features of the openEHR data types. > > The current openEHR data types are currently more full-featured, and in some > cases probably more complex than they need to be - adjustments may be > possible here (one example: the normal / reference ranges in DvQuantified > should be pulled out into a wrapper type or else added by inheritance to > DvQuantity and possibly DvCount, DvProportion). > > My conclusions at this point: > > building a data conversion interface between openEHR and HL7 of the future > now has a good chance of success, if the RFH data types develop in an > appropriate way > CEN/ISO 13606 should move to the RFH data types, and not use 21090 - doing > so is likely to set up a legacy in the future for 13606 users that HL7 > community is about to leave behind. It will allow 13606 to become much > closer to openEHR, and facilitate the merging of the models into one, which > I think is a necessary future step for both openEHR and 13606. > > If HL7 goes this way, some real convergence finally looks possible, and > people working on openEHR and 13606 need to think about how to go about it. > > - thomas beale > > > _______________________________________________ > openEHR-technical mailing list > openEHR-technical at openehr.org > http://lists.chime.ucl.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/openehr-technical > > -- ----- http://www.healthintersections.com.au / grahame at healthintersections.com.au / +61 411 867 065
