Tag Archives: Health Informatics

openEHR turns 20 today

Posted on 13/03/2023 by wolandscat

openEHR was officially created on 13 March 2003, 20 years ago today. Prof David Ingram thought of the name, and he and a small band of optimists – Dr Sam Heard, Dr Dipak Kalra, David Lloyd and myself – launched … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Health Informatics, openehr, standards | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Why using expressions in workflow is wrong

Posted on 07/11/2022 by wolandscat

One of the basic elements of design common to all workflow languages, including YAWL and BPMN, is the inclusion of logical expressions on decision nodes. This seems harmless, and we followed it in openEHR’s Task Planning specifications. However, it is … Continue reading →

Posted in openehr, standards, workflow | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

openEHR technical basics for HL7 and FHIR users

Posted on 10/04/2016 by wolandscat

Recent discussions on the FHIR chat forum with various HL7 people around the topic of how openEHR and other architectural frameworks (e.g. VA FHIM, CDISC) could work with FHIR led to a realisation that some people in HL7 at least … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, FHIR, Health Informatics, openehr, standards | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

e-Health standards – beyond the message mentality

Posted on 05/04/2016 by wolandscat

[a monk’s retreat near Thalori village] I just spent a few days in Crete at an experts workshop of the European e-Standards project that aims to bridge well-known gaps in e-health standards and SDOs. I’ll comment on that effort in … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, FHIR, Health Informatics, openehr, standards | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

New openEHR Whitepaper – for an open platform future

Posted on 21/10/2015 by wolandscat

Today saw the release of a new openEHR whitepaper, which provides a nice summary of open platforms thinking for e-health. From the executive summary: The key elements of openEHR’s strategic value to future development are: Technically it is a platform approach, … Continue reading →

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The folly of the obsession with source code

Posted on 20/02/2015 by wolandscat

My favourite topic these days is the phenomenon of fundamentalist thinking. You don’t need to go to Iraq to find it, it’s all around us…. Recently I chanced upon a post entitled ‘Coding is not the new literacy’ by Chris … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Health Informatics, openehr, Philosophy | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

Semantic scalability – the core challenge in e-health?

Posted on 15/12/2014 by wolandscat

A few months ago I posted on what makes a standard or set of standards in e-health investible. The headline requirements I can summarise as follows: platform-based: the standards must work together in a single coherent technical ecosystem, based on … Continue reading →

Posted in Health Informatics, openehr, standards | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Barriers to open source in the NHS

Posted on 08/11/2014 by wolandscat

There is a discussion going on on the NHS Technology Community site on what the barriers to open source are in the NHS, and how to address them. The posts are interesting, but one thing is lacking: a statement of what it … Continue reading →

Posted in Health Informatics, openehr, standards | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

No SQL databases, documents and data – some misunderstandings

Posted on 06/11/2014 by wolandscat

A good friend pointed me to this post: why you should never use MongoDB. It’s a very interesting post, about how bad MogoDB turned out to be for dealing with social network data. It’s not that MongoDB is bad per se, just … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Health Informatics, openehr | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Does anyone actually understand what terminology is for?

Posted on 30/10/2014 by wolandscat

I really wonder sometimes. A few months ago, an international organisation that has been looking at how to solve the requirement for scalable, sustainable content modelling (research data sets) did some trialling on the use of archetypes. This worked fine … Continue reading →

Posted in Health Informatics | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments