Good evening,
I am a postgraduate student in Bioinformatics and it may seem stupid but I would like to ask you a few questions about openEHR , as I was unable to find or understand them.
What database openEHR uses and what programming language?
Is it possible to alter the schema in order to fit to my needs?
Thank you in advance,
Mema Stamataki.
Hi,
openEHR is a specification, not a software system.
There are many implementations. Like https://github.com/ppazos/cabolabs-ehrserver
Regards,
Pablo.
It totally validates your questions, more when you enter the world of standards, and the lack of experts with assertive answers (something that is weak in this group), but that “another topic.”
Really openEHR as other standards do not have specified which programming language, database, network infrastructure, etc. should be used, this depends on the type of need you present.
I agree to ask the question to the group as there is very little documentation on what it means to bring the standard into practice. The first thing is to understand what the standard is used for, in what clinical domain you want to implement it and see what is available (open source or private). I think it could help you a lot more by being a bit more specific in what you want to know.
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Thank you all for your immediate response.
For example can I use openEHR to build a database for a rare disease ?
So, I can use whatever language suits my need if I understand correct?
I really do not have any experience.
Quoting Alejandro Benavides <alejandro@acronymcr.com>:
You are going to need an implementation for the back-end on which you can build applications. There are commercial implementations, and you may be able to obtain one of their systems free for academic use. Otherwise you are probably interested in the open source ones, of which there are two that are pretty comprehensive at the moment, called EtherCIS and EHRServer. You can find links here.
Hi,
while openEHR uses a reference model (= it enforces some assumptions and best practices about the domain) the clinical content is expressed by Archetypes and Templates. These define how classes from the reference model can be “orchestrated” and further constrained to represent meaningful clinical concepts. From a programmers perspective, it’s a model-driven approach to tackle the complexity of healthcare and to establish semantic interoperability. So yes, you can create a model that represents a clinical registry for rare diseases.
Take a look at the Archetype Editor: http://openehr.org/downloads/archetypeeditor/home and the Template Designer: http://openehr.org/download_files/TemplateDesigner/TemplateDesignerSetup_2.6.1213.3.exe
These tools are commonly used to edit Archetypes and Templates. Also check out the Clinical Knowledge Manager where you can find and download existing models: www.openehr.org/ckm
There are several ways to build an openEHR system. I would not recommend to start from scratch. Pablo’s Server is a good start but Ethercis is also worth a try (the Docker image is nice to get a quick start but you could also dive into the source code):
https://github.com/alessfg/docker-ethercis
To build your database, you will not need to do much programming when you use these solutions (you will need some “client code” to map, submit and query the data). Choose or build your Archetypes, create one or more templates, map your data (for example by using an XSD file that you can create by using the Template Designer, it’s call Template Document Schema), store it and retrieve data using the Archetype Query Language. Of course this is the short version, maybe the community should think about a good tutorial.
Hope this helps a bit,
Birger
Hi,
If this seems scary and confusing, that is normal
Essentially openEHR is a specification that allows people to build health data repositories that are vendor and technology-neutral. openEHR CDRs are very flexible health datastores that can immediately store and query new kinds of clinical data, without any re-programming or database reconfiguration.
As an implementer of e.g a rare disease registry application, you would upload definitions of the data you need using ‘templates’ themselves built of open-source ‘archetypes’ e.g blood pressure, lab test.
We are actually involved in helping build a very extensive Rare disease register in the UK as part of a Genomics England project and are starting to share our models at http://clinicalmodels.org.uk/ckm/#showProject_1051.61.28. The whole of this http://www.xmind.net/m/ZvDB dataset has now been modelled in openEHR and we will be uploading it to the UK CKM site over the next couple of weeks.
To make use of these you need to get access to an openEHR CDR (Clinical data repository). There are a number of commercial products available and at least two high quality open-source engines.
You should definitely explore Pablo’s Cabolabs CDR https://github.com/ppazos/ and
the EtherCis CDR https://github.com/ethercis/ethercis
I can also arrange access to a free cloud-hosted CDR via the NHS Code4Health program, for demo use only.
https://code4health.org/platform
For an overview of openEHR
https://www.slideshare.net/OceanInformatics/smart-data-smarter-healthcare
For an overview of the clinical modelling aspects:
https://www.slideshare.net/OceanInformatics/smart-data-smarter-healthcare
and Pablo has some great presentations on the technical aspects of CDRs but you almost certainly do not want to try to build your own
https://www.slideshare.net/pablitox/design-and-implementation-of-clinical-databases-using-openehr?qid=87811c0b-44fb-434d-9123-79793add44ba&v=&b=&from_search=1
Hope this helps - more information on your project would help us point you in the right direction.
Ian