Paul wrote: > Heya Tim, > > --- In [email protected], Tim Churches <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Yes, it seems to me that openEHR as it stands is an interesting and >> potentially useful technical advance which permits greater semantic >> precision and thus may ease the valid interchange of health data, but >> that there is a whole raft of sociological questions about how it might >> work in practice which still need to be addressed, and which probably >> can't be answered until more people start to use it and there is an >> openEHR "ecosystem" to observe. >> >> On the other hand, the Regenstreif/OpenMRS approach is arguably less >> rigorous, but has still been shown to work very well in practice over >> many decades, at least at the individual clinic/institute/repository >> level, but that its utility in a fully federated environment is still >> being explored. >> >> But it is not an either/or situation, and one approach does not need to >> prevail over the other. >> >> Tim C > > One quick clarification. The database approach OpenMRS utilizes, in > fact *has* been demonstrated convincingly to work in a federated > model. The INPC is one of the only truly operational RHIOs in the > country, and it's comprised of over 10 federated repositories all built > on top of this database design. Collectively, the INPC has over 2 > million patient records, and over 1 billion clinical observations > stored within it.
Ah, OK, I misunderstood. That's impressive. But when you say "federated repositories", what exactly do you mean? Are the 10 repositories free-standing, self-sufficient entities which exchange data with each other via messages or some other means, or are they "logical repositories" all running on the one centrally-hosted system/database? > However, the INPC is not built upon OpenMRS. It's built on top of the > RMRS, which was conceptualized in the early 70's. We're a close > cousin, open source, modern version of the RMRS model. Seems like a very good foundation to build on. Tim C
