# openEHR community on Google Wave **Category:** [Clinical (archive)](https://discourse.openehr.org/c/clinical-archive/153) **Created:** 2009-11-17 03:46 UTC **Views:** 7 **Replies:** 22 **URL:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/openehr-community-on-google-wave/14940 --- ## Post #1 by @heather.leslie For anyone who is interested and has a Google Wave account, I have started an openEHR community Wave with the intent of it being a coordinating point - which we can use as a jumping off point to various conversations or waves on specific topics or projects. This may work, or it may result in total chaos - I don't know ;-) >From this first wave I have set up two linked waves to kick it off - one for clinical modelling, particularly with trying to start to communicate and coordinate early archetype efforts, so that resources and efforts might be shared and enhanced rather than duplicated. It will no doubt evolve where the community wants to take it. I have set up an additional wave that can kickstart technical waves - I won't presume to suggest topics there. And anyone can add others as they see a need - the wave is totally open & public, so all can contribute and shape it. I certainly don't see this as conflicting to the current openEHR wiki nor to the lists. It is a different kind of medium - where IM, email and wiki overlap to achieve specific collaborative tasks, or to explore particular issues before recording/reporting them back to wiki or email list etc. We can make it what we want. It has been interesting to explore uses for Wave. I have been using it to collaborate on some of the CKM direction with Ian McNicoll and Sebastian Garde - there are situations where it has helped us communicate when these other mediums haven't been able to. And I'm also collaborating with clinicians in other countries re some content definitions and teasing out issues. In fact started one conversation on Twitter with a couple of pharmacists - one from UK and the other from US - re allergies. The US pharmacist put it into a blog to try to pull it together cohesively ([http://bit.ly/4EV0uw](http://bit.ly/4EV0uw)) and then we ended up thrashing out many points in detail and in context via a private Google Wave - an interesting and useful experience. For those who are interested and would like to participate, the openEHR community wave is [http://bit.ly/2unchr](http://bit.ly/2unchr) - invite all your friends. The Complete Guide to Google Wave is a useful resource - [http://completewaveguide.com/](http://completewaveguide.com/) Regards Heather --- ## Post #2 by @system Hi\! Google Wave is very interesting, but not yet very widespread\. I think Wave can be a good tool for openEHR\. Could you please make sure that the OpenEHR\-related wave\-discussions of public interest get copied to a more common and search\-engine freindly format too as soon as possible\. \(There are Google Wave robots/bots that can be added to a wave in order to automatically copy the wave content to e\.g\. blog format\.\) Otherwise you are again moving conversations from public searceable space to restricted private space, just like with discussions moved from open searchable wikis/mailinglists to the CKM\. That is a very bad thing for an open project\. Many people start problem solving by a using a search engine, so the discussions need to be publicly available for reading without login\. Currently you get good openEHR search engine results from the specifications, mailing list archives, wiki and openEHR web, but most likely not from CKM or wave\. Best regards, Erik Sundvall erik\.sundvall@liu\.se http://www.imt.liu.se/~erisu/ Tel: \+46\-13\-286733 \(Mail & tel\. recently changed, so please update your contact lists\.\) --- ## Post #3 by @ian.mcnicoll Hi Erik, This is a very important point. I agree entirely. The aim of the Wave project is wholly around working up some early drafts of possible archetypes. As such, this is really a new sort of activity which, in the past would tended to have been done by individuals or projects in isolation. It is not the sort of work that would ever have appeared on the lists in any case. Having said that, I would hope to feed back progress to the non-Wave community, especially if more general issues arise that would be of interest to the community. I will investigate the blog-feed addons you suggested. The number of Wave participants does now seem to be rising very rapidly and I would hope that if anyone wants to participate in the Wave 'experiment', that we should be able to get an invitation to them before too long. Certainly I still have a couple of invitations to hand-out if anyone would like to take part. I hope to get things started later this week. Fair point, though. For the moment we must ensure that we are not inadvertantly creating 'private' discussions, which is entirely contra to the purpose of using Wave in the first place!! The philosophy is to encourage collaboration at a very early stage so that overlapping and contradictory models/requirements can be rationalised before different groups have invested too much time and energy. Share early, share often. Dr Ian McNicoll office / fax +44(0)141 560 4657 mobile +44 (0)775 209 7859 skype ianmcnicoll [ian.mcnicoll@oceaninformatics.com](mailto:ian.mcnicoll@oceaninformatics.com) [ian@mcmi.co.uk](mailto:ian@mcmi.co.uk) Clinical Analyst Ocean Informatics openEHR Archetype Editorial Group Member BCS Primary Health Care SG Group [www.phcsg.org](http://www.phcsg.org) / BCS Health Scotland 2009/11/17 Erik Sundvall <[erik.sundvall@liu.se](mailto:erik.sundvall@liu.se)> --- ## Post #4 by @Stef_Verlinden1 Hi Heather, How can we sign in to this Google wave? The access is restricted. Cheers, Stef --- ## Post #5 by @R_Alemi Seconded Here\.\.\. --- ## Post #6 by @ian.mcnicoll Hi Stef, Do you have a Google Wave account? The openEHR community wave is itself public but you do need a Google Wave account to get in at all. Ian Dr Ian McNicoll office / fax +44(0)141 560 4657 mobile +44 (0)775 209 7859 skype ianmcnicoll [ian.mcnicoll@oceaninformatics.com](mailto:ian.mcnicoll@oceaninformatics.com) [ian@mcmi.co.uk](mailto:ian@mcmi.co.uk) Clinical Analyst Ocean Informatics openEHR Archetype Editorial Group Member BCS Primary Health Care SG Group [www.phcsg.org](http://www.phcsg.org) / BCS Health Scotland 2009/11/17 Stef Verlinden <[stef@vivici.nl](mailto:stef@vivici.nl)> --- ## Post #7 by @Arin_Basu Signing on to Google wave: The way I did: I clicked on the link provided in the first post of this thread and it opened the google wave for me. I clicked on the "follow" button to receive the wave contents on my wave inbox. If you do not have a Wave account, I suggest you sign up for an invitation from the Google wave webpage here: [https://wave.google.com/wave/](https://wave.google.com/wave/) Hope this helps, Arin --- ## Post #8 by @Pauline_Sweetman I have some google wave invitations if anyone needs one Pauline 07932 661678 --- ## Post #9 by @heather.leslie Hi everyone, As a point of clarification, this is just an initiative started by me, rightly or wrongly, by myself and with no official consultation. This is not a formal openEHR Foundation activity, so all flack can be directed back to me. If I have caused any confusion, I apologise. I'm just enthusiastic and interested to further explore the potential (or not) offered by Google Wave. The Wave itself (and now with a few additional subWaves) is open to the public. That said, the extent of public involvement is currently limited to those who have been able to get themselves a Google Wave account, but this will grow over time as the whole Wave platform gains momentum. So if you are interested, beg, borrow or steal an invitation from colleagues or friends. While these initial 'coordinating waves' are public, small groups may go off and use a private Wave to work on a task or project - just like they do now using email, skype or IM. The result should be identical - submitting the draft archetype to CKM or contributing to the email lists or wiki. I see Google Wave as just another optional vehicle for sharing ideas - no more. I am certainly not suggesting that we change anything about the way that the openEHR current communication strategies through website, wiki and email lists. One of my main interests in Wave has been the need for us to design an archetype sandpit or nursery - a collaborative space in which anyone can start to link up with others, share resources and support each other in the design and creation of draft archetypes for submission into the CKM review process. As soon as I heard about Google Wave, it sounded like it was trying to achieve a similar thing. So I've been waiting with bated breath. And my conclusion so far it that the Wave functionality is very much the kind of thing I had envisaged as the ultimate 'CKM sandbox'. Now there are also possibilities to have federations of Wave servers... how that may or may not fit into CKM design is yet to be determined, but worth investigating. Interestingly there are a number of people who have joined the Waves and left messages of interest who I have not seen submitting emails on these lists - so perhaps there are potential members of the openEHR community that we can tap into using these other media. Hope this clarifies I have given all my Google Wave invitations away, and I know Ian had some - not sure if this is still the case. Perhaps others on these lists might offer some to others thru the list if they have some spares... Kind regards Heather --- ## Post #10 by @Pauline_Sweetman Hi all, I still have five wave invitations left if anyone else needs one. Heather, I think one of the advantages of the wave is that is much less daunting to jump into than the CKM environment. A disadvantage that we have already found in playing around with it is that it can very quickly become fragmented, disjointed, messy or long. Users will need to be fairly rigorous about keeping the sandpit neatly raked :-) Kind regards Pauline +44 7932 661 678 --- ## Post #11 by @system Hi\! > If I have caused any confusion, I apologise\. I'm just enthusiastic and > interested to further explore the potential \(or not\) offered by Google > Wave\. It is a very nice initiative Heather and there is no need to apologise, just a need to get the discussions out in open public searchable space \(and that also goes for the currently unsearchable CKM\)\. I believe that in a set of properly managed wave conversations it might be easier to follow the discussion flow, and it might be a less fragmented user experience than the current CKM is\. If done right and when there are more wave providers than Google \(since wave uses a truly open protocol\) then we could at the same time get rid of the current CKM vendor lock\-in and extension limitations \(without creating another vendor lock in\)\. > While these initial 'coordinating waves' are public, small groups may go off > and use a private Wave to work on a task or project \- just like they do now > using email, skype or IM\. Yes of course some conversations \(or parts of conversations\) will always be private since humans prefer to work that way sometimes\. The problem is if things are inaccessible and unsearchable even when there is no intention to keep the discussion private\. > The result should be identical \- submitting the > draft archetype to CKM or contributing to the email lists or wiki\. If wave\-based tools become widespread and powerful enough to do openEHR review, voting etc\., then I don't see CKM as a necessary step in the pipeline to finally submitting archetypes/templates to simple stable repositories\. Every shift of tools along the way adds a potential user confusion\. By the way, have you tried using mindmapping gadgets for openEHR related development in wave, I found an open source mindmapping gadget that even includes a voting mechanism and freemind\-import facilities at: http://wave-samples-gallery.appspot.com/about_app?app_id=64007 See also: http://www.brucecooper.net/2009/11/mind-map-gadget-for-google-wave.html And since the mindmapping gadget is open source it could easily be modified by any java/GWT developer to add features that you'd find useful for openEHR related use :\-\) Best regards, Erik Sundvall erik\.sundvall@liu\.se http://www.imt.liu.se/~erisu/ Tel: \+46\-13\-286733 \(Mail & tel\. recently changed, so please update your contact lists\.\) P\.s\. To add voting to suitable items \(e\.g\. corresponding to when you use voting in CKM\) it seems like http://wave-samples-gallery.appspot.com/about_app?app_id=23006 might be useful\. I guess a proper discussion will often solve things without the need for voting though\.\.\. --- ## Post #12 by @system Hi Erik Can you tell me what search capabilities you want in CKM that are not there\. You can export a protégé ontology, all the archetypes and have all the search power we have thought of from the asset management platform\. Unsearchable seems a little unfair\. Cheers, Sam --- ## Post #13 by @system Hi Sam\! > Hi Erik > Can you tell me what search capabilities you want in CKM that are not there\. > You can export a protégé ontology, all the archetypes and have all the > search power we have thought of from the asset management platform\. > Unsearchable seems a little unfair\. If you read my CKM\-search\-reasoning in other related messages carefully again you will see that I have been talking about the CKM not being searchable via major search engines \(like Google Search\) hence the wording "open public searchable space"\. The problem is that the CKM content currently is "locked in" behind passwords and a search\-engine\-unfriendly application structure so that the content is not a proper part of the "web" that search engine spiders can index\. This is a fairly simple technical publishing problem that can be solved if there is a will from the ones owning the CKM application\. A more serious meta\-problem is if the search\-engine\-unfriendliness is not seen as a problem by the application owners and by the foundation using the application\. The wiki and mailinglists \(via archives\) do not suffer from this searchability problem, they were built with openness in mind and are fully searchable and any discussion regarding certain archetypes in them etc will be found\. An extra plus is that their content can also be archived by sites like http://www.archive.org In openEHR we are often talking about the value of capturing clinical context in order to interpret data, as a thought\-experiment try to apply the same thinking regarding archetype development\. You \(and your search queries\) might want to see the context of discussion and the review comments for archetypes, not just the final archetypes\. Best regards, Erik Sundvall erik\.sundvall@liu\.se http://www.imt.liu.se/~erisu/ Tel: \+46\-13\-286733 \(Mail & tel\. recently changed, so please update your contact lists\.\) --- ## Post #14 by @thomas.beale I am not sure what use having search engines seeing into the CKM is. We have robots turned off for all SVN repositories, including the one that used to hold all the archetypes. Search engines only tell you about things you did not already know about; whether they could report anything coherent from CKM I am not sure, same as for all the source code in the SVN repositories. Or are you suggesting we make all that searchable as well (it kills performance by the way). Google or any other search engine doesn't know how to search CKM in an intelligent fashion....but if you go into CKM, which is fully open, you can see everything. I am unclear on the problem. - thomas beale Erik Sundvall wrote: [details="(attachments)"] ![OceanC\_small.png|74x72](upload://5I367QG2SMJUp18Pt3jF6yz13Ey.png) [/details] --- ## Post #15 by @Koray_Atalag Hi All, I don't understand how the terms "vendor lock\-in", "behind doors" etc\. are associated with Ocean \- I see it as a social service organisation rather than a commercial entity by the way :P Interesting times ;\) Though I am hoping that we can identify the underlying reasons why some of us got so much sensitized and discuss this openly\.\.\. Cheers, \-koray --- ## Post #16 by @system Hi, I think a couple of things could be changed to make CKM more search-friendly, but I also think we have to look carefully what we want and where: - The idea behind linking comments/discussions directly to an archetype and not just using a mailing list or the like is that we want comments for an archetype gathered in one place so that they are in fact easier accessible than via common search engines. I certainly felt that a lot of discussions were repeated on the mailing lists, because nobody could remember that the question had been asked for that archetype already. However, currently it is only possible to search comments for a certain archetype and we may want to search for comments of all archetypes (because we know what we are searching for, but not exactly for which archetype it may have been posted). - All new comments are already available by a news feed you just need to subscribe to as well as on the Dashboard. Also you can select to get email notifications on any new comment (or comments for a specific archetype or comment for a specific thread of comments.) There are probably tools to take a newsfeed and post the contents somewhere for anybody who likes to do this. However, there may be additional value to automatically post the comments to somewhere where they are indexable from google etc. This e.g. could be another openEHR mailing list that receives all new comments. - We could also make the comments available without having to log in to CKM if people feel strongly about this. Then only if you want to post a new comment you need to log in and probably only access the commenters' profiles once logged in as well. - With regard to archetype reviews, I am not so sure if they should be accessible without even logging in. Neither I am sure if there is value in having them indexed by search engines. I strongly believe that they need to be structured and displayed in an archetype-specific way and groupable by review rounds, directly linked to the way the archetype looked liked at that stage of the review process, etc. to be useful. Everybody can access all reviews in CKM (when logged in), while reviewers can choose to be anonymous (and only reveal their identity to other members of the review team). Certainly the CKM approach is more open than any HL7 (or the like) process I have seen. Everybody can access it and everybody who wants to can participate. - With regards to archetypes, you can download all of them or a selection of them. There are webservices to access them, and a couple more are going to be added in the next release as discussed on the wiki and wave. And if there is need for more, we can always add them - When google wave is out of beta and open to everybody, we will certainly explore how we can make use of it, integrated in CKM and/or as a starting point for archetype development, etc. Regards Sebastian --- ## Post #17 by @system Thanks Sebastian\! You nicely adressed most of my concerns and seem to understand the problems\. Tom & Sam: In this thread on Nov 17 I wrote "Many people start problem solving by a using a search engine, so that the discussions need to be publicly available for reading without login"\. That seems to be the point you missed but Sebastian understood\. Thanks Sebastian\! Tom: If you already know where to look then you have done half the job, I tried to adress the problem of not knowing where to look \(e\.g\. questions like "is there any openEHR work regarding deafness"\)\. Tom you are probably one of the few people that actually know exactly where to look for any thinkable openEHR thing, but you are an exception ;\-\) \(In a positve sense\.\) Tom wrote: > We have robots turned off for all SVN repositories, including the one that used to > hold all the archetypes\. Once upon a time not even the specifications were searchable, that was easily solved by copying releases to a web directory Koray: you said "Ocean \- I see it as a social service organisation rather than a commercial entity by the way :P" That view is not completely shared everywhere\. I agree that Ocean Informatics contributes tremendously to openEHR\. Leading, starting and contributing to open projects is nowadays something many commercial companies do including gigants like IBM and Sun\. The reason is not just altruistic, rather it is bothe a kind of efficient marketing of other related services and a way of tapping in to a wider community of resources in a way benefiting all involved parties\. How to do this open/commercial mix in a good way is really not easy, Sun has for example had some problems with this\. Koray, the "behind doors"\-thing I think regard e\.g\. the widely circulating rumours that the OpenEHR\-fondation and/or Ocean has invited some organisations and/or companies to a meeting regarding the "commersialisation of openEHR" or something and possibly to the fact that the Foundation Board seems only accountable to itself\. I don't really know exactly what different people know or think, but I agree that a discussion would be valuable\. But the discussion is neither technical or clinical so I'll try to stop abusing these lists for that purpose and have started a wiki page at: The openEHR community is wonderful and contributions from companies, organisations, universities etc\. are fantastic\. I am sure that potential tensions can be solved and misunderstandings can be cleared if discussed openly\. \(On the wikipage maybe?\) I also understand that there are real issues regarding funding that need to be solved, and hope that the whole community will sooner or later be entrusted to listen in to and contribute to those discussions\. Best regards, Erik Sundvall erik\.sundvall@liu\.se http://www.imt.liu.se/~erisu/ Tel: \+46\-13\-286733 \(Mail & tel\. recently changed, so please update your contact lists\.\) P\.s\. to Sebastian regarding archetype reviews: yes they would be better presented together with the context they were written in, so I'd suggest that such a view would showing them in context could be created and being the one exposed to search engines, not every comment as an individual page\. --- ## Post #18 by @yampeku Link to the wiki page? --- ## Post #19 by @system Hi\! Sebastian, you nicely addressed most of my concerns and seem to understand the problem\. Tom & Sam: In this thread on Nov 17 I wrote "Many people start problem solving by a using a search engine, \[\.\.\.\] the discussions need to be publicly available for reading without login"\. That seems to be the point you missed but Sebastian understood\. Thanks Sebastian\! If you already know where to look then you have already done half the job, I tried to address the problem of not knowing where to look \(e\.g\. questions like "is there any openEHR work regarding deafness", such search results should also include content from CKM discussions\)\. Tom you are probably one of the few people that actually know exactly where to look for any thinkable openEHR thing, but you are an exception \(in a positive sense\) and will seldom be the basis of a standard use\-case ;\-\) Tom wrote: > We have robots turned off for all SVN repositories, including the one that used to > hold all the archetypes\. Once upon a time not even the specifications were searchable since they only were in the indexing\-blocked SVN, that was really bad, but it was easily solved by copying releases to a indexable web server directory\. Koray: Regarding Ocean as a "social service organisation", closed doors etc, I agree that would be valuable to discuss, but the discussion is neither technical or clinical so I'll try to stop abusing these lists for that purpose and have started a wiki page for the topic at: http://www.openehr.org/wiki/display/oecom/openEHR+transparency \(Those that want that discussion in the inbox can subscribe to changes on that page\. I'll post something next week but others might post something before me\.\) Best regards, Erik Sundvall erik\.sundvall@liu\.se http://www.imt.liu.se/~erisu/ Tel: \+46\-13\-286733 \(Mail & tel\. recently changed, so please update your contact lists\.\) P\.s\. Sebastian: Regarding archetype reviews, yes they would be better presented together with the context they were written in, so I'd suggest that such a view would showing them in context could be created and being the one exposed to search engines, there is no point in publishing every comment as an separate page\. Tom and other programmers: Yes, it would be nice to republish at least the completed releases from sourcecode repositories too \(in a indexable way\) if the SVN server can't take the load directly\. Try searching for "openehr" on http://www.google.com/codesearch \- it will mostly show results not hosted by openehr\.org \(and some old defunct now blocked links from openehr\.org\)\. It even searches and nicely displays contents of zip\-files with code, it identifies programming language, licence type etc\. A wonderful tool that openehr\.org currently has opted out from\. \(It even found cached code from your old now taken\-over domain Deepthought\. That's an example archiving service as I mentioned earlier as a positive thing with being indexable\.\) --- ## Post #20 by @system Sorry about multiple versions of the mail to the lists\. You can ignore the first one\. The mail sent at 13:26 is the correct one containing more on topic text and with the off\-topic stuff moved to the wiki\. I obviously happened to unknowlinlgy send the message before I had moved the openEHR\-organisation\-related content to the wiki page and continued to edit the mail\. The wiki link is in the later version: http://www.openehr.org/wiki/display/oecom/openEHR+transparency // Erik --- ## Post #21 by @Eric_Browne No problem Erik\. In any case, I'm sure Google will preserve ALL versions of your emails in its open source repository for posterity\. ;\-\) eric --- ## Post #22 by @thomas.beale Erik Sundvall wrote: > ``` > Thanks Sebastian! > > You nicely adressed most of my concerns and seem to understand the problems. > > Tom & Sam: In this thread on Nov 17 I wrote "Many people start problem > solving by a using a search engine, so that the discussions need to be > publicly available for reading without login". That seems to be the > point you missed but Sebastian understood. Thanks Sebastian! > > ``` well true to some extent, but once you have a vague idea of the commnity or location where 'real answers' are, you don't bother with google search any more, you go to that place. I don't use google to search Medline, or wikipedia, or he UK Jobseeker/employer database, or any online store, or anything else that has its own internal logic; the only thing I might use google for is to find those places in the first instance. Note that i am not against *in principle* public access of anything on CKM - it is just that to be practically useful, google isn't going to provide a useful way to query its contents. > ``` > Tom: If you already know where to look then you have done half the > job, I tried to adress the problem of not knowing where to look (e.g. > questions like "is there any openEHR work regarding deafness"). Tom > > ``` well I would start with openEHR.org, just as I would start with the Dell site if I wanted to buy a Dell computer. I might use google to find these sites, but then I would stop using google, and use what those sites had to offer me. > ``` > you are probably one of the few people that actually know exactly > where to look for any thinkable openEHR thing, but you are an > exception ;-) (In a positve sense.) > > Tom wrote: > > ``` > > > ``` > > We have robots turned off for all SVN repositories, including the one that used to > > hold all the archetypes. > > > > ``` > > ``` > > Once upon a time not even the specifications were searchable, that was > easily solved by copying releases to a web directory > > ``` I suppose that is true as well, but I must admit, if I was looking for something in an openEHR spec, I would run the search on openEHR.org, not google, or any other generic search engine. Re: the other issues about governance etc - openEHR is currently an unfunded volunteer organisation. The board is looking at ways to get it to a more financially stable situation. This would likely involve improvements to governance, making sure that the committee structure was representative according to more formal rules. I am all for this. The current situation can be considered somewhere along the continuum of an early small project group (from the GEHR days) to a fully open and funded open standards/source organisation, a point we have yet to arrive at. The lack of funding remains a problem, and needs to be solved. Nothing comes for free, certainly not 1100 pages of tested EHR specifications, some 100,000s lines of open source code etc, and with the growing number of users around the world, ways need to be found to make openEHR financially viable, just like any other .org, charity or similar non-profit organisation. I see part of the responsibility for solving this as being on the community - if it has value to you, then consider ways in which funding could be achieved that will work. One method that won't work is charging for standards - which stops many ISO standards being used. But a model has to be found - proposals from anyone are welcome. - thomas beale --- ## Post #23 by @system Hi\! > Could you please make sure that the OpenEHR\-related wave\-discussions > of public interest get copied to a more common \[\.\.\.\] format too It seems like any \_public\_ wave can be reached via http://archive.waverz.com/ if you know it's ID, since most openEHR related are linked form a hub and are public you can start browsing and reading the waves from\.\.\. http://archive.waverz.com/googlewave.com!w+3cGqRD7SI/ \.\.\.without having a wave account\. The wave formatting and message ordering at waverz\.com is pretty bad at present and "gadgets" are not supported, so it is an even shakier user experience than Googles wave implementation, but you can at least get a hint about the contents\. Best regards, Erik Sundvall erik\.sundvall@liu\.se http://www.imt.liu.se/~erisu/ Tel: \+46\-13\-286733 \(Mail & tel\. recently changed, so please update your contact lists\.\) --- **Canonical:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/openehr-community-on-google-wave/14940 **Original content:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/openehr-community-on-google-wave/14940