Some answers to that here. Needless to say, if we went to openEHRv2, it would be for the next 20y, not an endless rollout of breakages each 2 years…
That would work in an openEHRv2 system of course. Data migration from openEHRv1 to v2 would be needed for those systems and vendors that wanted to do it. But the improvements (having build quite a few of them) are definitely worth it. And it would be one of the easiest data migrations ever. People get worried about breaking changes to openEHR (and that’s reasonable, don’t get me wrong), but routinely don’t think twice about endless data conversion in and out of openEHR, HL7v2, FHIR, OMOP, IHE, X12, and more - and these are not the same RM with breaking changes, but different paradigms, generally with difficult to reconcile semantics. Those conversions are creating errors and omissions in data all the time. So we need to be realistic.
We should definitely take note of this. However there are some changes so central that they change everything. So it’s worth considering whether we hang on to openEHRv1 longer and keep grafting non-breaking improvements, and bite the bullet later (more data, larger models deployed) or do it sooner. Both paths are possible, and probably both are reasonable, but the costs and consequences need to be understood.
Breaking changes can be managed well, or badly. We need to do it well. We have coherent architectures and a good community approach to change management.