Dear All, I am very honoured to be invited to take up this important role as Chair of the Clinical Review Board within the openEHR Foundation.
Please allow me to introduce myself and my interest in openEHRs mission. I would welcome your feedback and views as I explain below. - I qualified as a doctor in Dublin and now work as a Consultant in Emergency Medicine based in Leeds, spending half of my week working with NHS Connecting for Health which is delivering the National Programme for IT here in England. For many years I have been well aware that we as clinicians are very dependent on effective information management. Indeed we must address this challenge to firstly survive and then hopefully thrive as 21st century healthcare pressures increase.. As my work in Informatics has grown over the last years, I have increasingly understood that these challenges are only a part of a wider international struggle to change many health care systems in very fundamental ways. Much of my work within NHS Connecting for Health has been centred around what I call a "Healthcare Change Challenge" involving people, process and technology change. Indeed it was research in that area and the potential offered by standards to support that change that helped me come across openEHR. When I first came across openEHR I must admit it took me some time to understand what it offered. Over a little time it became much clearer and a "lightbulb" came on, as it appeared to offer a potential solution to several of the "wicked problems" I had been struggling with for some years. It is a credit to the initial minds behind this work that openEHR has provided, to me at least, a way to tackle the complex challenge that informatics provides. The openEHR archetypes and templates offer many obvious advantages and indeed I find the openEHR reference model with its simple but clear relationship with key generic clinical processes a key strength of openEHRs approach, which no other standard does so well.. We have been quietly using openEHR to develop clinical content models (archetypes and templates) within the NHS for some time now, building up a Clinical Content Service. This service aims to develop (for the first time in the NHS) clinically driven, open standards based, reusable, shareable, clinical content models. In doing so we are trying to reduce duplication of effort, encourage consistencies and standardisation of clinical records where appropriate, though we have some way to go to see them used in action within vendor EHR systems..something we continue to pursue... While it is a quiet start, I feel that it is only the beginning, as I expect that vendors will increasingly appreciate the enormous potential on offer, by providing more native support for openEHR than they currently offer. In due course I also believe that, given the right tools, that more ownership and control of health ICT development will quite naturally end up in the hands of those who need it most, i.e. the clinicians. - I must admit I have stayed silent on this mailing list until now, watching the varied email exchanges on many parts of the openEHR work that continue to develop, trying to learn more all the time. With that in mind I would like to ask this clinical group a single question that I hope might provoke some useful feedback.. Can I ask you (wherever you are and whatever your clinical challenges are) what are the *top 5* things you would like to see the openEHR foundation tackle to move us all in the right direction over the next year/18months and better support your own challenges as a clinician? That might be better communication, better means to get involved, better tools etc etc...whatever you happen to think.. I would like to collate your views, feed them back to the group and then present them to the openEHR CRB and into the emerging openEHR Foundation discussions on strategic direction, which as Professor Ingram has outlined, have recently begun.. This is an important time for openEHR, as increasingly light is being shone on it. I think it is also an exciting time, which we need to take advantage of. I look forward to hearing from you either via this mailing list/ directly to me if you prefer at tony.shannon at nhs.net With kind regards, Tony Dr. Tony Shannon Consultant in Emergency Medicine, Leeds Teaching Hospitals Clinical Lead, Clinical Content Service, NHS Connecting for Health Senior Research Fellow, University College London +44.789.988 5068 tony.shannon at nhs.net Thomas Beale wrote: > [this is a repost of an announcement made a week ago, for those on the > clinical list but not on the announce list] > > from Prof David Ingram, CHIME department, University College London: > > I am delighted to announce that Dr Tony Shannon has accepted an > invitation, on behalf of the openEHR Foundation Board, to take over the > chair of the Clinical Review Board. Tony has long experience and > interest in clinical information management, as Clinical Lead for the > Clinical Content Service of NHS Connecting for Health and as Consultant > in Emergency Medicine at Leeds Teaching Hospitals. > > My UCL colleague, Dr Dipak Kalra, has been the founding chair of the CRB > but felt it the right time to step down and make way for a new > appointment, recognising, as we all do, that openEHR governance needs to > spread beyond the founding members at UCL and Ocean Informatics. Dipak, > Sam Heard and I remain as the active directors of the Foundation, but > this, too, may well change quickly, in the period ahead, as we work to > broaden the governance of the Foundation. Ideally, we feel that the > Foundation needs to remain agile and inclusive in its work, while > consolidating its relationships and accountability to users and > international stakeholder organisations, keen to capitalise on its work. > In this transition, we must try to avoid exchanging a crucible of > innovation for a tanker full of treacle. > > Tony Shannon has an honorary appointment as senior research fellow at > UCL and has been active clinically in building wider awareness of and > engagement with the mission of openEHR, for several years. Along with > Tim Cook, a member of the ARB, he has joined Sam, Dipak, Tom Beale and > me in crucial new discussions about how to take the Foundation into its > next stage of development and governance, as its work grows rapidly in > international focus and importance. We have received a number of > approaches for new partnerships and we will be taking these very > seriously and opening discussions more widely within the international > community, including at a session of the WoHIT conference in November, > under the auspices of our collaborating partners in EuroRec. > > openEHR exists to champion the clinical ownership of the fundamental > requirements for effective and useful electronic health records and to > support the discipline, engagement and trust required to help them > succeed. Central to its approach is shared and collaborative research, > development and iterative evaluation, though real world implementations. > > > > * > * > > _______________________________________________ > openEHR-clinical mailing list > openEHR-clinical at openehr.org > http://lists.chime.ucl.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/openehr-clinical *********************************************************************** This message may contain confidential and privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient you should not disclose, copy or distribute information in this e-mail or take any action in reliance on its contents. To do so is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. Please inform the sender that this message has gone astray before deleting it. Thank you. 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the NHS. It's an opportunity to pay tribute to the NHS staff and volunteers who help shape the service, and celebrate their achievements. 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