# Cloud EHRServer is about to be launched **Category:** [Implementers (archive)](https://discourse.openehr.org/c/implementers-archive/158) **Created:** 2016-12-26 05:22 UTC **Views:** 11 **Replies:** 51 **URL:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/cloud-ehrserver-is-about-to-be-launched/15459 --- ## Post #1 by @system 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](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/](https://cloudehrserver.com/) Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Thanks a lot for your support! Kind regards, Pablo. --- ## Post #2 by @Jan-Marc_Verlinden1 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 --- ## Post #3 by @system 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 --- ## Post #4 by @system Hi there, imo announcing those things is ok. What should be avoided is cross-posting which happens quite a lot. Cheers, Birger --- ## Post #5 by @Peter_Gummer 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](http://openehr.org/community/mailinglists) Peter --- ## Post #6 by @system It is a read only list, Peter. We are not able to use it. Bert --- ## Post #7 by @system 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/](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](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. --- ## Post #8 by @system > 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 --- ## Post #9 by @system 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](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 --- ## Post #10 by @system 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 --- ## Post #11 by @system 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 --- ## Post #12 by @system 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](http://www.openehr.org/downloads/ehrcomponents) 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](http://www.openehr.org/industry_partners/). There are undoubtedly better ways to announce and present these kinds of information, and as ever, suggestions to do so are welcome. - thomas --- ## Post #13 by @system 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 --- ## Post #14 by @yampeku And what about free software? :) --- ## Post #15 by @system Free as in free beer? ;-) Good question! --- ## Post #16 by @system '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 --- ## Post #17 by @system 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 --- ## Post #18 by @system 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 --- ## Post #19 by @yampeku 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 :\) --- ## Post #20 by @system 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 --- ## Post #21 by @system Following from what you and Bert have said, it seems that the following could make sense: - Foundation announcements list / channel (= openehr-announce list we have now) - software / libraries / tools announcements (= web home page news items with cog icon, [also here](http://www.openehr.org/news_events/releases)) - this includes open source software libs / projects - commercial product offerings - currently we don't really have a way of doing this, but Industry Partners can post on web home page (factory icon) I'm not sure what the right approach is, since there are many technical possibilities. Marcus Baw has proposed moving to [Discourse](http://www.discourse.org/) as a forum platform - maybe this is the kind of thing we should look at? - thomas --- ## Post #22 by @Pekka_Pesola I agree - moving to some kind of a forum would in overall work much better than mailing lists. -Pekka --- ## Post #23 by @system Discourse has certainly worked pretty well for the Uk CCIO network\. Any objections to us giving it a trial, perhaps initially for 'general discussion' and 'community news' tracks\. Picking up on Bert's earlier suggestion, is there room for a 'professional' membership category, costing just under 100 euro per annum? Essentially the same as individual membership but giving very small commercial entities, the ability to post news of software and educational events\. Ian Dr Ian McNicoll mobile \+44 \(0\)775 209 7859 office \+44 \(0\)1536 414994 skype: ianmcnicoll email: ian@freshehr\.com twitter: @ianmcnicoll Co\-Chair, openEHR Foundation ian\.mcnicoll@openehr\.org Director, freshEHR Clinical Informatics Ltd\. Director, HANDIHealth CIC Hon\. Senior Research Associate, CHIME, UCL --- ## Post #24 by @Karsten_Hilbert Certainly not\. Lists are get/select, forums are go/browse\. Many people don't have time to waste for going browsing\. Karsten --- ## Post #25 by @yampeku I'm pretty sure discord can notify you by email of every post or even mention you have in your subscribed channels --- ## Post #26 by @system It should be possible to sync a forum to a mailinglist. Works quite well in google groups for example. Birger --- ## Post #27 by @system Hi Karsten As Diego has suggested, discourse can be used in news server mode both to receive and respond to posts. That is mostly how I use it for the uk ccio lists. Ian --- ## Post #28 by @Karsten_Hilbert Sure\. But then I still have to \_go\_ and read the post\. With a list the notify IS the post\. And I can't archive posts \(say, by topic\), entirely delete posts, read posts offline, \.\.\. \(Note that I am mainly talking about the established lists, as Pekka seemed to be suggesting moving to an all\-forum approach \-\- for announcements, a forum may be fine\.\) Karsten --- ## Post #29 by @marcusbaw Here's some links to existing forums using the Discourse forum platform, which is what I propose we use for the openEHR community: [https://www.openhealthhub.org/](https://www.openhealthhub.org/) [https://discourse.leighhack.org/](https://discourse.leighhack.org/) And here is the forum that the Discourse team uses for its own software: [https://meta.discourse.org/](https://meta.discourse.org/) It's notable as it has a good example of a Marketplace area which can be used for software announcements of the kind recently discussed. In the main it works pretty similar to a mailing list (in that new postings can be notified to users via email, just like people are used to) except there is also a web interface for the forum which provides a nice way of browsing content, especially older content. It's fairly configurable, and there is quite a lot of flexibility to create special interest areas/lists. The notifications are user-customisable so it's easy to unsubscribe yourself from notifications if you're getting too many. I agree with Ian's suggestion to trial the forum and see how well it works for this community. Marcus --- ## Post #30 by @Klaus_D_Veil Agree with Karsten. "Push" communications (eg e-mail) are much more effective at reaching people than "Pull" communications (web sites forums, etc.) I have seen the "views"/"eyeballs" drop off significantly when communities move to forums such as Discourse... in particular the "views" of those who are not so active in these communities. They indeed don't have the motivation to go browsing. As all research in internet marketing will tell you, e-mail is the most effective way of reaching people. Klaus --- ## Post #31 by @system I have no experience with Discourse, I cannot judge how it works\. Some people, I see, like it\. Important is the push\-effect\. I read the openehr mailing list because it is pushed to me\. Else I would not read it\. Sorry for that, but my days are very filled up, it is easy to not do something\. I am a member of some forums, became a member because I needed some advice, and there are people on a forum posting all day\. But as soon as my business on a forum is done, I forget to go there\. > Picking up on Bert's earlier suggestion, is there room for a 'professional' membership category, costing just under 100 euro per annum? Essentially the same as individual membership but giving very small commercial entities, the ability to post news of software and educational events\. Thanks Ian for picking up and I agree with how you reformulated the idea\. Bert --- ## Post #32 by @Karsten_Hilbert While I am not in the least interested in being marketed to the technical points are exactly what I am trying to point out\. I do agree forums earn bonus points in providing a more visually appealing archive\. And they exhibit a greater tendency of getting hacked for diverting credentials\. Regards, Karsten --- ## Post #33 by @Karsten_Hilbert Precisely\. Again, for announcements \(which started this thread\) a forum/"marketplace" may be fine, even better if it can push posts to subscribers\. OTOH, that's exactly the place where Karl's insight into marketing really does matter \.\.\. Also, such an announcement list is typically read\-only \(answers are not really to be expected\)\. Karsten --- ## Post #34 by @Karsten_Hilbert Klaus, not Karl, very sorry indeed\. Karsten --- ## Post #35 by @system It should be read only, discussing what is on that list needs to be done on another list\. The messages should also be short, very short, and a link for explanations\. Bert --- ## Post #36 by @pablo IMO we are over-engineering things that can be solved by agreeing on a set of rules. We even have two lists technical and implements and there might be just one. The active members of the community that participate in these channels is low. Adding more communication channels will just disperse the community. We need less channels and usage rules. --- ## Post #37 by @system Hi Pablo, I agree that there are some lists which can be combined to technical, as you say, technical, implementers and ref\_impl\_java\. That is indeed over\-engineering\. But I don't agree on the second part because I think announcements must be read\-only, as a courtesy to the announcer\. And another argument, for example, when you offer a small service, writing archetypes, giving education, or you write a modeling tool, or even a book, that kind of things, I don't see that fit in a technical or clinical mailing\-list\. It makes it also easy to search the archive for services or products\. Bert --- ## Post #38 by @system Personally I don't like one-way communication channels. I prefer to receive feedback, questions, etc. and leave those questions and answers open for the community, so others can come in and contribute. For small communities is better to have few channels, under the same platform, open and bidirectional. We are thinking as engineers here, we should think as community managers and community members. --- ## Post #39 by @H11 +1 --- ## Post #40 by @Pekka_Pesola I agree that the channels need to be well thought but i also think the community needs the best available platform for communication. I don't find the current solution inviting to new members at all. Web archive lacks a good search and replying to old threads is not possible trough web archive. That is in the end what implementers will do. When the specs don't explicitly cover something they will search for information on how others have done the same thing and ask if required - this should be super easy and usable. -Pekka --- ## Post #41 by @wouterzanen We are starting to use discourse in our company as a means for communicating with user groups. No real experiences yet other than configuring the platform. Discourse offers some appealing options, one of the best is the option to react directly by mail. So you have the possibilities of a forum wrapped with the ease of use of an announcement list. Alternatively you can have categories on the forum completely act like a announcement list like this one. During our market survey it seemed the best (down to earth) solution for managing our small community of users. Wouter >>> Pablo Pazos 30/12/2016 18:28 >>> Personally I don't like one-way communication channels. I prefer to receive feedback, questions, etc. and leave those questions and answers open for the community, so others can come in and contribute. For small communities is better to have few channels, under the same platform, open and bidirectional. We are thinking as engineers here, we should think as community managers and community members. [details="(attachments)"] ![IMAGE.png|800x104](upload://2DeQ6RjkGN65k9d6m6NKdoDm1ch.png) [/details] --- ## Post #42 by @system Thanks for the input everyone\. My feeling is that Discourse is worth a small experiment but we will discuss at the Mgt Board meeting in a couple of weeks\. Ian Dr Ian McNicoll mobile \+44 \(0\)775 209 7859 office \+44 \(0\)1536 414994 skype: ianmcnicoll email: ian@freshehr\.com twitter: @ianmcnicoll Co\-Chair, openEHR Foundation ian\.mcnicoll@openehr\.org Director, freshEHR Clinical Informatics Ltd\. Director, HANDIHealth CIC Hon\. Senior Research Associate, CHIME, UCL --- ## Post #43 by @system Please, Ian, also discuss an announcementlist for free and open source software (my favour is read-only, announcements only), and, also your own suggestion, to have a low fee membership for single person or low income business Thanks Bert --- ## Post #44 by @system Hi Bert, Sorry \- I should have made that clearer \- it is also on the agenda\. Ian Dr Ian McNicoll mobile \+44 \(0\)775 209 7859 office \+44 \(0\)1536 414994 skype: ianmcnicoll email: ian@freshehr\.com twitter: @ianmcnicoll Co\-Chair, openEHR Foundation ian\.mcnicoll@openehr\.org Director, freshEHR Clinical Informatics Ltd\. Director, HANDIHealth CIC Hon\. Senior Research Associate, CHIME, UCL --- ## Post #45 by @system Bert, I would suggest that anyone who is not yet really running a business or generating income from openEHR just become an individual member\. \- thomas --- ## Post #46 by @system My issue is that for people running incidental business or incidental income, maybe only a few thousands a year, 650 Euro is really a lot of money. Of course for real business, with employees and so on, 650 is nothing. Those people running incidental business could possibly want to announce services or software on a announcement list (which is still to setup.) --- ## Post #47 by @system I think people matching this description would just be individual members, at €15 p\.a\. I don't see any reason to prevent anyone from announcing software projects or products, services etc on the \(to be created\) announcement list\. \- thomas --- ## Post #48 by @system For me, that is just fine as you describe --- ## Post #49 by @marcusbaw Discourse will allow a number of things to happen that you can't have at present: * online forum with email notifications and reply-via-email function built in * any combination of public, login-only, and private forums that is needed by the openEHR community * 'announcement' lists can be made 'read-only' by locking the post straight after posting * nested subforums * wikified sections of text which can be updated by any logged-in user * embedded, inline documents, googledocs, images and videos * private messages (useful for when wanting to contact someone whom you know of but don't have an email address for) * 'accepted answer' to a question can be marked and thereafter a direct link to the accepted answer is displayed right in the post asking the question (a little bit like Stack Overflow, not quite as rich, but good enough). and lots of other stuff I'm happy to set an instance up for the community as long as we have a few people who'll help maintain, moderate and manage it. For those that don't like online fora, the email-based experience of Discourse is similar enough to a mailing list not to be an issue (for most) The absolute key and killer feature of fora vs mailing lists is that with mailing lists you only really have a history of the topics in your email, going as far back as when you joined the mailing list. With fora, you have the entire history of everything, saving duplicate posts and repeated asking of the same solved questions. M [details="(attachments)"] ![IMAGE.png|800x104](upload://2DeQ6RjkGN65k9d6m6NKdoDm1ch.png) [/details] --- ## Post #50 by @system Hi Marcus, thanks for the summarizing the highlights of Discourse. One request for elaboration, please: --- ## Post #51 by @marcusbaw Hi Roger, answers to your query are below: --- ## Post #52 by @system Hi, I wonder if there is any status-change since then? Almost 10 months ago since we had this discussion Bert --- **Canonical:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/cloud-ehrserver-is-about-to-be-launched/15459 **Original content:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/cloud-ehrserver-is-about-to-be-launched/15459