A masters thesis by Murat Gök from 2008 is now available at http://www.openehr.org/shared-resources/publications/archetypes.html
Abstract: this thesis reports a case study of an openEHR system at the Emergency Department, Austin Health, Melbourne, and arose from the collaboration with Austin Health, the Austin Centre for Applied Clinical Informatics (ACACI), the Nursing Informatics Group, the Biomedical Engineering Department, the Emergency Department, the Central Queensland University Health Informatics Research Group, Ocean Informatics, and the Department of Medical Informatics (University of Göttingen).
The aim of this thesis is to provide a roadmap for the introduction of an electronic health record system based on the openEHR (http://www.openehr.org) approach for a health service within a public hospital in Australia. The idea of electronic health records (EHRs) was born approximately 40 years ago [GL96] and consequently several concepts were developed. One of these approaches is the ”Good European Health Record” (GEHR) project on which the openEHR Foundation builds.
Over time the openEHR approach has matured, however, there is still a lack of knowledge on how to introduce an openEHR-based system (implementation and migration strategies). To tackle this problem, the thesis gives an overview of the openEHR approach by presenting the history, architecture, and relations to other standards in electronic health care. The patient flow in an emergency department (ED) of a public hospital (Austin Health) is then analysed in regards to the information produced and documented. This thesis investigates how the data items in the ED can be gathered and mapped to openEHR archetypes, thus formally representing the clinical knowledge. The reusable archetypes cover more than 70% of all archetypes needed in the ED. This figure may vary for other departments. It also points at the development of openEHR templates (a combination of archetypes) through utilising mind maps. Using an example of a ventilation system, data can be migrated from proprietary systems and transferred to an openEHR-based data storage. An explanation is given for an openEHR architecture based EHR system, providing the foundation for the implementation of an openEHRbased prototype.
The thesis shows how an openEHR architecture based EHR system can be introduced in practical terms and how this could lead to interoperability within a department.