Just to set the record straight, HL7 membership includes access to the standards IP, there are no additional access or purchase fees.
Country affiliate level participation in HL7 carries all IP benefits and for HL7 UK costs ?650 +VAT for organization membership. Having said that, I agree with Thomas's overall point regarding needing resource to work effectively. Regards, Ann W. Ann M Wrightson Pensaer TG | Technical Architect Gwasanaeth Gwybodeg GIG Cymru | NHS Wales Informatics Service Symudol/Mobile: 07535 481797 Llanelwy | St Asaph: WHTN: 1815 8232 Ff?n/Tel : 01745 448232 Pencoed: WHTN: 1808 8930 Ff?n/Tel: 01656 778940 ________________________________ From: openehr-technical-bounces at openehr.org [mailto:openehr-technical-boun...@openehr.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Beale Sent: 04 November 2010 18:59 To: Openehr-Technical; For openEHR clinical discussions Subject: Re: Why is OpenEHR adoption so slow? There are many things that can be improved in openEHR, no doubt about it. Some comments. First of all, HL7 charges membership fees, meeting attendance fees and purchase fees for the standards; a small company can easily spend $10,000 - $20,000 per annum just on the cash outlay. Larger companies routinely spend $100k per annum when you take into account meeting attendance expenses and opportunity costs. These fees, plus donations by some large companies, fund HL7 marketing efforts. Such an operation does not come for free. If we are to have regional communities, an affiliate model of some kind makes sense. However there is no getting away from some prerequisites: * someone has to pay for the human resource at both local and central levels; 100% volunteer work is just too unreliable * there has to be a way to get all the affiliates established in the first place, which really means creating an association in each country that subscribes to the same common cause - i.e. getting a lot of countries to agree on a common thing. History tells us this is VERY HARD. * the 'common cause' almost certainly has to have some official standards status, or regional affiliates might get lots of interested individuals, but will fail to get MoH/DoH involvement, and hence fail to influence national programmes, and and probably also vendors In sum: the organisation needs a distributed organisational governance structure, and it needs sufficient legitimacy for funding to be provided. Now, the world currently already includes ISO, CEN, HL7, IHE, IHTSDO, OMG, and dozens of other standards bodies, which have a) some governance structure and b) sufficient perceived legitimacy to get some funding. However, there is great fatigue on the user side: most of these organisations compete, don't cooperate properly, don't formally or empirically validate their deliverables, and are not strongly driven by their main stakeholders. For this reason, openEHR has stayed away from creating yet another organisation, overlaid on this crowded scene. In e-health, the exception to the above is IHTSDO, a relative newcomer to the scene, and while not perfect, it is significantly better in all of these areas. It has: * a pretty good governance model, including an explicit member country and affiliate model * direct board membership by key stakeholders of its deliverable, i.e. national e-health programmes * formally defined and relatively well managed specification, software, and terminology deliverables (none of which are anything like perfect today, but the point is that a reasonable process is in place) For this reason, the openEHR Foundation and IHTSDO have been in talks to determine what kind of cooperation could occur in the future, which would a) allow openEHR to work within or alongside the IHTSDO global organisational structure and b) enable IHTSDO to take better advantage of the openEHR knowledge engineering technology, in particular terminology integration. These discussions have not yet completed, but some kind of announcement could be expected in the near future. If some better organisational and funding structure can be created, aligned with an accepted standards body, then I think the whole thing will accelerate very fast. - thomas beale On 02/11/2010 16:29, pablo pazos wrote: Hi Seref and Shinji, I share your opinions. Once in a while, we need discussions like this, since we have to lead ourselves somewhere and combine efforts if we want to support the difussion and adopton of the standard. The domain is complex, the problem is complex, the solution must be complex, but if we add the complexity of the standard to the complexity of understanding another language (the specs are english only), we have a serious problems for a worldwide adoption. I share Shinji's vision, we must support and encourage regional OpenEHR communities, specs translation, and "open source multilingual up-to-date tools" (most tools available are: or not multiligual or the translations are horrible, or not open source, or not updated recently). I think regional communities can create courses, resources, materials, etc... and share them with other communities, throught OpenEHR foundation. Guidelines to do this must be set from the OpenEHR Foundation Boards (I think they are there to lead the community, to encourage the spread and adoption of the standard, I can't remember the last time I saw an email of the OpenEHR Boards in the mailling lists). Within those guidelines, we can be coordinated, and maybe set year-based goals. And once a year or two we can make some event to share our experiences and progress from our local communities (can be local or regional events, since for most of ours it's hard to travel so far). These ideas are not new, just look at the HL7 coutry based structure. I know this words may sound hard to someone, I just want to support the success of the standard, but I think if we keep doing things the same way, we'll end with a high quality standard with no one to implement it. Cymraeg:- Mae'r neges hon yn gyfrinachol nad chi yw'r derbynnydd y bwriedid y neges ar ei gyfer, byddwch mor garedig ? rhoi gwybod i'r anfonydd yn ddi-oed. Dylid ystyried un rhywd datganiadau neu sylwadau a wneir uchod yn rhai personol,ac nid o angen rhaid yn rhai o eiddo Bwrdd Iechyd Prifysgol GIG Abertawe Bro Morgannwg, nac unrhyw ran gyfansoddol ohoni na chorff cysylltiedig. Cofiwch fod yn ymwybodol ei bod yn bosibl y bydd disgwyl i Bwrdd Iechyd Prifysgol GIG Abertawe Bro Morgannwg roi cyhoeddusrwydd i gynnwys unrhyw ebost neu ohebiaeth a dderbynnir, yn unol ag amodau'r Ddeddf Rhyddid Gwybodaeth 2000. I gael mwy o wybodaeth am Ryddid Gwybodaeth, cofiwch gyfeirio at wefan Bwrdd Iechyd Prifysgol GIG Abertawe Bro Morgannwg ar www.abm.wales.nhs.uk English:- This message is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient of the message then please notify the sender immediately. Any of the statements or comments made above should be regarded as personal and not necessarily those of Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board any constituent part or connected body. Please be aware that, under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board may be required to make public the content of any emails or correspondence received. For further information on Freedom of Information, please refer to the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board website at www.abm.university-trust.wales.nhs.uk. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.openehr.org/mailman/private/openehr-technical_lists.openehr.org/attachments/20101108/d0589ce0/attachment.html>
