Publications

Most of my ‘publications’ are either on Github or at openEHR.org. A few papers I published in the academic literature are below.

Health Informatics

Books / book chapters

• Person-Centered Health Records – Toward HealthePeople. (Springer page for this book).
  • Jim E Demetriades, Robert M Kolodner, Gary A Christopherson (Eds.)
  • Springer 2005.
    Includes a chapter by Ken Rubin, Thomas Beale, Bernd Blobel on Modelling for Health Care.

• Electronic Health Records and Communication for Better Health Care. (IOS Press page for this book).
  • François Mennerat (Ed).
  • IOS Press 2002.
    Includes a chapter by Dipak Kalra, Thomas Beale, Sam Heard on openEHR.

Peer-reviewed & conference

• An Ontology-based Model of Clinical Information.  (PDF)
  • Thomas Beale (a), Sam Heard (b)
    a CTO Ocean Informatics, visiting Senior Research Fellow, University College London
    b CEO Ocean Informatics, Adjunct Professor, University Central Queensland
  • pp760-764 Proceedings MedInfo 2007, K. Kuhn et al. (Eds), IOS Publishing 2007.
  • Abstract: In this paper we describe a model of clinical information designed to make health information systems properly interoperable and safely computable. The model is a response  to a number of categories of requirements, ranging from the semantic to the performance of software at runtime. We argue that the starting point of a successful model must be an ontological analysis of the process of clinical care delivery, seen as a scientific problem-solving process. From this approach we develop a classification of types of clinical information called the Clinical InvestigatorRecord (CIR) ontology.

• EHR Query Language (EQL) – a query language for archetype-based health records. (PDF)
  • Chunlan Ma (a), Heath Frankel (a), Thomas Beale (a), Sam Heard (a)
    (a) Ocean Informatics
  • pp 397-401 Proceedings of MedInfo 2007, K. Kuhn et al. (Eds), IOS publishing, 2007.
  • Abstract: OpenEHR specifications have been developed to standardise the representation of an international electronic health record (EHR). The language used for querying EHR data is not as yet part of the specification. To fill in this gap, Ocean Informatics has developed a query language currently known as EHR Query Language (EQL), a declarative language supporting queries on EHR data. EQL is neutral to EHR systems, programming languages and system environments and depends only on the openEHR archetype model and semantics. Thus, in principle, EQL can be used in any archetype-based computational context. In the EHR context described here, particular queries  mention concepts from the openEHR EHR Reference Model (RM). EQL can be used as a common query language for disparate archetype-based applications. The use of a common RM, archetypes, and a companion query language, such as EQL, semantic interoperability of EHR information is much closer. This paper introduces the EQL syntax  and provides example clinical queries to illustrate the syntax. Finally, currentimplementations and future directions are outlined.
• The Electronic Health Record – why is it so hard? (Beale_imia_2005_yb)
  • Published in the IMIA Yearbook of Medical Informatics 2005

• Archetypes: Constraint-based domain models for future-proof information systems. (PDF 185kb, 17pp)
  • Beale T.
  • In: Eleventh OOPSLA Workshop on Behavioral Semantics: Serving the Customer (Seattle, Washington, USA, November 4, 2002). Edited by Kenneth Baclawski and Haim Kilov. Northeastern University, Boston, 2002, pp. 16-32.

Older papers

• Health Information Standards Manifesto (PDF) – Thomas Beale, published online in 2001 (PDF 472 kb).
  • This paper was widely read and referenced at the time. It contains many of the seeds for the technical architecture openEHR.
• Archetypes – An Interoperable Knowledge Methodology for Future-proof Information Systems. Beale T. Published online in 2000. (PDF 700 kb)

Community Informatics

• I was lucky enought to be invited to write a chapter for Michael Gurstein’s 2000 book on community informatics. In hindsight the analysis was too ambitious and somewhat naïve at the same time, but it seems to have provoked a few conversations in its domain (e.g. in the journal of community informatics)