Have you ever been momentarily stumped when asked to explain exactly what openEHR is? What it does? Why it matters? Conversations about the importance of open standards in healthcare are crucial, and getting the message across - in a way that can be easily understood by everyone, not just techies - can be pretty challenging.
@Lars_Fuhrmann - a member of this year’s fellowship cohort - has had the brilliant idea of inviting members of the community to share their own version of ‘openEHR 101’ at EHRCON25 in Barcelona. Think of it as a ‘show-and-tell-meets-pitch-slam’, with participants given the chance to explain openEHR in just 5 minutes, keeping in mind the following:
Maximum 1 slide per ‘pitch’ (slides are not obligatory, and a flip chart will be provided)
Props are encouraged - the more innovative, the better!
Use whatever analogy works for you
Your presentation cannot exceed 5 minutes
Bonus points for avoiding the words: archetype, clinical modelling, semantic harmonisation, datatypes, mapping, terminology bindings…
The lucky winner will take home a coveted prize
If you’re interested in taking part, email events@openehr.org or send me a DM on this platform before Friday 19 September.
I love this idea - an extended variation on the classic elevator pitch - what you can say during the ride between floors in a lift!! Look forward to watching the recordings! Thank you.
@mikael really you can use ANY words, ANY props, ANY means you see fit…. we all Lego. It would be great to get the community sharing their tools and tips…
Thank you so much for putting this in motion!
you can definitely count me in.
The background is that in my presentations i often spend quite a bit of time covering the “symptoms” of our current IT landscape and the “pathogenesis” of these issues and wanting to end by explaining a lot about the Archetypes and their potential uses.
This meant i usually did not have more than 1-2 slides and less than 5 minutes to explain openEHR and it’s multi-level approach. And I thought I can’t be the only one with that problem.
Some things crossed my mind, just as suggestions:
I think it would be great if we could be a bit flexible about the scope of the presentations so that we can align with what people think they are best at explaining. Maybe some want to cover what openEHR is as a whole, maybe some want to cover how Archetypes/Templates/Compositions work. Maybe some want to cover AQL or the Semantic versioning/archetype publishing process? Or how openEHR relates to other standards? openEHR’s Organisational structure? I think it would be great to have people show off whatever they are best at explaining, all of these things may need to be consisely explained to non-openEHR experts in some situations.
Maybe it makes sense to give participants the chance to say who the target audience for their pitch would be, whether that is how you would explain it to clinicians, to patients, insurers, political decision makers, EHR vendors or a bunch of 10-year olds etc. I think needs to be clear so that the EHRCON audience can farly judge whether the explanation would be well-suited for that target audience. (of course, toy props may work well with all of those )
So I’m not sure about whether we need a strict list of terms to avoid, if someone wants to do a “what are archetypes”-pitch it may make sense to call them by that name?
If we are going to record it maybe we need a second camera to show the presenter’s hands/props more closely, and probably a table to rest those props on.
Here are some potentially useful things that i found laying around in my home. I won’t tell you which one’s I’ll use, but I will take all of them to barcelona. So anyone can feel free use them in their presentations.
I probably won’t take all the lego’s with me, let me know if you need special ones…
I might be able to find duplo’s as well, those are a bit bigger and easier to see.
No need to tell me what you will need from these until the last minute, I will take them with me anyway, keep your secrets
also pinging @Sidharth_Ramesh@SevKohler and I’ll invite my fellow fellows..
I mean, Abi said there’s a prize!!
@Lars_Fuhrmann thanks so much for this! You’re absolutely right and we will leave this to the community/presenters to choose how to present their pitches.
We are 100% flexible about what people choose to present - and to whom
No terms are banned, but innovation and novelty are encouraged
A table will be available for demonstration purposes
Anything goes!
We’re still hoping for more expresssions of interest, so if this idea appeals to anyone in the community then please get in touch. It’s a great opportunity for knowledge sharing.
I literally bought into openEHR when I bumped into Tom in an elevator back in 2001 or 2002 at a conference in Berlin! Not sure all of those words were even invented by then
At an internal departmental meeting, I invited people to pick a clinical concept (yes blood pressure measurement was one of them!) and hold an A4 paper with the mindmap of Archetypes and then asked them to group in ways to represent some key documents like discharge summary, lab request, diabetic assessment etc. It was fun and a way to illustrate reusability
I don’t want to discourage anyone else, but I am thinking that 6 participants is actually quite a good number for 1 hour time, as I think it would be great if we left a little bit of room inbetween to discuss/give feedback to make it a bit more interactive (+vote at the end?). It would be a bit of a shame to have to hurry this too much, especially if it is as fun as I hope.
I suspect that lunch sessions don’t always start exactly on time, so there will already effectively be <5 min between presentations for feedback/discussions/setup, which is not a lot.
While I did originally plan to participate myself i would also be happy to just be the moderator (first time, so please be nice everyone! ).
Lego. It would be great to get the community sharing their tools and tips… 
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