How is openEHR supposed to be used?

Question

I am researching about electronic health records (EHR). OpenEHR seems to be quite extended and appreciated in this field, as it is widely adopted. However, I fail to find how it

Answer 1

welcome to the world of openEHR :)

You may also find looking at open source examples useful - we have implemented an endoscopy reporting application using openEHR from persistence to automated GUI. A .Net winforms application in this case but uses MVC so I'd assume it wouldn't be too difficult to use Web or Mobile front-ends. What you won't find in openEHR at the moment is the means to model 'UI' together with data - therefore we used a 'hack' and exploited annotations feature to create some "GUI Directives" that are embedded into the clinical models.

Have a look at: http://gastros.codeplex.com

Also have written a couple 'papers' on implementation of openEHR if you like that sort of thing ;)

Atalag K, Yang HY, Tempero E, Warren JR. Evaluation of software maintainability with openEHR–a comparison of architectures. International Journal of Medical Informatics

Atalag K, Yang HY, Tempero E, Warren J. Model Driven Development of Clinical Information Sytems using openEHR. Stud Health Technol Inform. 2011;169:849–53.

Atalag K, Yang HY. From openEHR Domain Models to Advanced User Interfaces: a Case Study in Endoscopy. Wellington; 2010. Available from: http://www.hinz.org.nz/uploads/file/2010conference/P17_Atalag.pdf

Good luck! One last note - HL7 as some others have noted is for 'outside of systems' or for health information exchange - some have attempted to use RIM to build applications. openEHR exists for this purpose - so it is THE specifications to build EHR systems. The emerging FHIR standard from HL7 has similarities in terms of defining clinical data models - I also recommend to watch that space: We are hoping some sort of convergence will occur in the not so distant future hopefully ;)