Tool for validation of archetyped RM instance against corresponding archetypes?

Technical (archive)
1

Dear all,

I am looking for a tool that allows to validate an instance of the reference model, which complies with one or more archetypes, against these archetypes. Is such a tool available?

Thank you for any help,
Georg

2

Hi Georg,

Such a tool is very useful for many reasons. Although it doesn’t yet exist in the Java project, one could easily build it using building blocks from the Java project. There are different parsers that can transform archetypes and data instances into according in-memory forms (RM/AOM). Some low level validation API already exists in the Java AOM implementation.

But I think it’s rather important for the community to agree on a common design (and later a common API) for archetype based validation for the following reasons:

  1. ensure correct and consistent implemenetations of archetype based validation across different platforms
  2. enable platform-independent verification of different implementations to ensure data interoperability and quality.

I created a wiki page on this as a starting point, http://www.openehr.org/wiki/display/dev/Data+Validation

Cheers,
Rong

3

Hi Georg,

Ocean Informatics has a Web Service interface to our EHR Server, which contains an openEHR kernel that does significant validation against archetypes and templates as part of a Commit operation. If the instance is valid, it will be committed to the EHR and the result can be displayed using our EHR Display Broker. The Web Service is intended as a component of EHR Applications rather than a validation tool and hence it would be necessary to make some initialisation calls to the service before making the Commit. This might be a total of 10-20 lines apart from whatever is necessary to bind to the Web Service itself. The Ocean EHR components are available under commercial and academic licences.

Regards

Heath

Heath Frankel
Product Development Manager

Ocean Informatics

Ground Floor, 64 Hindmarsh Square

Adelaide, SA, 5000

Australia

ph: +61 (0)8 8223 3075

mb: +61 (0)412 030 741
email: heath.frankel@oceaninformatics.com

4

Georg Duftschmid wrote:

Dear all,

I am looking for a tool that allows to validate an instance of the
reference model, which complies with one or more archetypes, against
these archetypes. Is such a tool available?

Thank you for any help,
Georg

probably it should be pointed out that such 'comparators' do already
exist, but within EHR systems rather than as standalone tools; the
component is usually known as an 'openEHR kernel' in this context.

We need also to be aware of the abstract model of such tools, which
currently is that data is always validated against an openEHR Template
which in turn references one or more openEHR Archetypes and potentially
also Terminology subsets. This means that at a minimum, Templates,
Archetypes and Terminology Subsets as technical artefacts must be
accessible to such tools. In a systems context, these are available from
various services. In a standalone tool context, at a minimum, they
should be available from within something like a recognised file system
directory structure.

Standalone versions could be built; it would be interesting to know what
your ideal specification of such a tool is, i.e. does it operate like a
typical unix tool that just reads files?

- thomas beale