Cloud EHRServer is about to be launched

Implementers (archive)
1

Dear friends,

I’m about to launch the Cloud EHRServer, a clinical data repository / health information system backend as a service. I’m very excited about this, since I invested a lot on the EHRServer development and now it seems natural to take this next step to make further development sustainable in time.

This SaaS is based on the EHRServer, the first open source openEHR clinical data repository, I’ve been developing for the last years. The development and maintenance of the EHRServer will continue in parallel to the Cloud EHRServer.

There are two big use cases for this kind of service. One is to serve as a backend of clinical information systems that need to access the same data e.g. web and mobile apps. The other use case is to centralize shared clinical information, generated by different systems, accessible in a standardized way.

For the first phase of the Cloud EHRServer we will only accept sign-ups for the Beta Partners Program, a reduced group of people / companies that want to use the service, participate on its improvement, and grow with us.

The cost of participation in the Beta Partners Program will be 25USD/mo with options for 6 or 12 months. This is be like a medium sized plan but without any restrictions, do you don’t have to worry about quotas during prototyping and testing. This will help us to maintain the infrastructure and scale on the first year, while developing some features of the current roadmap to v1.0

The Beta Partners will receive training, premium support, early access to guides and new releases of the EHRServer, access to online events, will be able to propose new features and vote to prioritize them, to help the service move towards the needs of the community.

The current status of the EHRServer is that we are about to launch v0.9 that will be production-ready, and we already have a production server in place with HTTPS working. The EHRServer was in the cloud for more than 12 months on a staging server, and we have about 300 registered users, between testers and students of my courses (http://www.cabolabs.com/en/training). We will have 2 staging servers alongside the production one.

Next week I will launch the official Website with more information, the sign-up form for the Beta Partners Program and some initial guides. On the first days of January the production server will be enabled for use. For now if you want to know more please fill the contact form: https://cloudehrserver.com/

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Thanks a lot for your support!

Kind regards,
Pablo.

2

Dear Pablo,

First of all congratulations with your (future) release!

Secondly please keep in mind that this is -not- a group for advertisements. Think we should differentiate between common openEHR stuff and more commercial things. Even if the platform is open sourced, you are obviously “selling” licences.

I think BTW that there are more open source releases..;-).

All the best!! Jan-Marc

3

I think Jan Marc has a point but Pablo is excused because there is no other way inside the community
Would be a good idea to have a list for announcements by the public.

Best regards
Bert Verhees

4

Hi there,

imo announcing those things is ok. What should be avoided is cross-posting which happens quite a lot.

Cheers,

Birger

5

There is in fact a mailing list dedicated to announcements: the openehr-announce list. It’s the first one listed here:
http://openehr.org/community/mailinglists

Peter

6

It is a read only list, Peter. We are not able to use it.

Bert

7

Dear friends,

First thanks a lot for all your private emails supporting me on this new challenge and for the people that believes that initiatives like this one are of a great value to our community, since clinical data storage is an open problem in the openEHR world.

Some updates!

The website is up and running: https://cloudehrserver.com/

If you detect any errors please let me know.

It has some basic information and guides. I’ll be adding more guides and tech docs soon.

In the community section you can find client libraries I created for PHP, Javascript and Groovy. Basically are helpers and sample code to help you on using the EHRServer REST API. If you want to create a client for another language, please let me know!

Also there is a project called openEHR-OPT: a command line tool that allows to 1. generate HTML GUI from an OPT, 2. generate XML instances from an OPT (VERSION or just COMPOSITION), 3. validate XML instances using the openEHR XSD.

All the aforementioned tools are open source, as the EHRServer itself, designed & developed by me in the last couple of years.

For know the full documentation is the EHRServer guide that can be found here: http://cabolabs.com/en/projects

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Happy new year for everyone!

Kind regards,

Pablo.

PS: yes, I use these lists because there is no other way to reach the community and the announcing list is used by the openEHR Foundation Board, not by community members. I though a lot about this, and I firmly believe this is of value to the openEHR community as a whole and that is the most important aspect than if I charge money to use the service. As I mentioned, this is an open source development and the fee is to maintain infrastructure and allow further development of the tool. Without this support the project will just die, since it is just me designing and developing, staying up late at night, using my weekends to work on the project, etc. and it has been that way since 2009 when I started with my first PoC for an openEHR backend. Please consider this and I ask for a little understanding. Thanks.

8

there is no other way to reach the community and the announcing list is used by the openEHR Foundation Board, not by community members

Great Pablo, congratulations. Good work. Important for the community.

I think this issue needs to be repaired soon. It must be the Christmas period that there is no reaction from the Foundation now.

Best regards
Bert

9

First of all best wishes to everyone in 2017 and congratulations to Pablo.

For clarification, the Announce list is indeed for Foundation use only, and we would generally discourage postings of a commercial nature on these lists.

Having said that, I think we can cut Pablo, and other similar community projects, a little slack. I’d just ask posters to try to keep the commercial aspects of any similar announcement e.g. any fees/ conditions, out of the main post and just put in a link for those who want to purse it.

And, of course anyone who is moving into a more commercial space, might want to consider becoming an Industry partner and taking advantage of the new ‘Micro Startup’ rates http://members.openehr.org/join-us !! That allows us to give your project/company much more visibility on the openEHR site and access to the Industry News page.

Ian

10

Thanks, Ian, and for you and others, off course, also best wishes.

Since I mixed myself in this discussion, I need to think about a way of getting out again.
So, let me explain what is reasonable from my point of view.

I think, most people will excuse Pablo for posting his project on the lists.
On the other hand, I understand the complaints of people who have paid a membership, about people publishing commercial projects for free.

So, this is a difficult matter.

It is not very good possible to have an open announcement list, for commercial purposes, it would attract spam, it would need to be moderated.
But on the other hand, commercial projects can be of the interests of the community. We could consider a way to make such an announcement list under conditions possible.

I think the Micro-Startup plan would be to heavy for incidental startups. 650 Euro per year is quite a lot of money for someone who is trying a commercial idea or someone who is in a gray area between commercial and community.

To summarize:
I would welcome a commercial announcement-list, strictly OpenEHR related, and accessible for posting for a small fee, say 50 Euro a year for individuals and for those already industry member, of course, for free.

Best regards
Bert

11

It may be that we need a community-based announce list as well. We'd have to think of some rules to make sure it was low volume, useful and balanced.

- thomas

12

Agree with Ian…

I think the correct approach is that open source software can be openly announced, after all, in some sense it is a gift to the community. Open source offerings are permanently represented under the Tools menu on the website. For commercial activities, including those that use open source, there is the Industry partners programme, which leads to vendors being represented here on the website.

There are undoubtedly better ways to announce and present these kinds of information, and as ever, suggestions to do so are welcome.

  • thomas
13

Hi Thomas, I am not sure about my position in this. But thanks for the invitation to reply. I think there must be more communication between the openehr-community and what happens on the market (non-commercial as also commercial) So I agree with you that there should be an announcement list for open source projects, new releases, features, etc. You wrote that on an other email today. I have a question about the industry-partner announcements. Does the current structure not have an announcement space for industry partners? I could not find such a space. I can imagine that industry partners would like to have an opportunity to present their (new) products/versions to the communities, because that is where they are often aiming to sell. To avoid spamming by industry partners on such a list, the email-traffic could be restricted, only once a month, for example. And I would favor a reconsideration of the fee-price for industry partners, I think especially for startups or individual partners, the price is too high, especially for the first year.. I think, there will be more partners attracted to try a business, especially when they have an announcement-list to present their commercial ideas. To my idea, it would be good for the foundation to support as many interested parties as possible in finding their way in the openehr communities. Best regards Bert

14

And what about free software? :slight_smile:

15

Free as in free beer? :wink: Good question!

16

‘News’ section, middle of the front page. Any item with a ‘factory’ icon is industry generated content. All industry partners can produce announcements there. Not saying this is the best possible system, it’s just the current system. well, one has to ask what is a minimum level of business to be doing as a commercial vendor. €0.5m? €1m p.a.? The bronze level of membership is €1000 p.a. This seems pretty minimal to me in the overall scheme of things. Does the vendor obtain value from openEHR - specifications, open source software etc? Is the openEHR IP worth 1-2 days’ work, which is what €1000 equates to? If it’s worth less than that, probably it’s not providing them any real value. The micro startup is €650 p.a. This is the cost of 1 day’s work to a company. If openEHR is not worth that to a startup, then I’d say they have not yet started up … Agree with that. We are looking into some alternatives. agree. - thomas

17

I found the question of Diego very interesting, you help the community by bringing them in contact with a great and free product, but not open source.

Bert

18

Bert,

I'm not clear what you mean. As far as I know, the website lists all open source and free things, even if they are not open source (e.g. Template Designer and LinkEHR). What products / projects are you referring to?

- thomas

19

Well, we will provide for free a product that was behind a paywall
before (LinkEHR lite was the free version we had, and now the 'basic'
and free version is the equivalent to the past LinkEHR editor). I'm
curious what kind of announcement we could make :slight_smile:

20

You are right, Thomas, I did not realize that, sorry for that. I was referring to the remark of Diego. I think he should reply to this question.

But there is something I would like to have.

I would like an announcement list where free and/or open source tooling would have a place.

Diego published some weeks ago some Snomed related efforts, but he had no chance then to mingle it in some discussion.
I think, what he really wanted, but I might be wrong, let him correct me, that he would like to make an announcement about this softtware, which is not open source. I think that building that software is too much effort for him to give it away, but it could be a candidate for some form of commercial success or maybe not.

For this kind of software, build by someone who is not really representing an enterprise, which is beneficial to the community, next to open source, an announcement list would be nice.

The difference with a news page, or a download page is that an announcement list is pushed into the community. So this list should not replace the download-list, but be something new in addition to the download list.

A lot of words, I hope the idea is clear.

Bert