Dear friends,
I do not think a semantic discussion on the origin and meanings of the
word proprietary is helpful. To me, also an advocate of formal standards
in CEN and ISO, it is clear that we should regard openEHR artefacts as
non-proprietary in line with other communitites in the world of open
standards and open source sharing. I am amazed that some people have
questioned this. The main reasons are two-fold: a) The specs are openly
available free of charge to read and to use and b) The organisation that
develops and maintains them (The OpenEHR foundation) is open for anybody
with a very low modest membership fee and in addition we have always
taken onboard sound technical change requests even from people that are
not voting members.
However, the formal standards bodies with its often special status in
national legislation (and in international agrrements like the European
Union and World Trade Agreement have an advantage in some respects to
informal bodies like openEHR. Firstly, ISO is important as a federation
of national standards bodies, legislation e.g. on public procurement
usually refer primarily to formal national standards, that in many cases
are just endorsements of ISO standards. I believe that many people in
the information systems world are underestimating the status and value
of ISO (and IEC) standards because there are so many examples of new
informal consortias or open organisations that are formed that play
important roles. However, for products like EHR systems that are
becoming more and more regulated by medical device legislation in the
world and where interoperability becomes a very important
characteristic, I think a status as a formal ISO stadnard would be
beneficial for openEHR at some point. Having said this I am by no means
suggesting to close openEHR as an organisation for development and
sharing of artefacts but I think we should carefully consider to submit
some of the specifications for endoresements as ISO standards in much
the same way as DICOM or HL7 or IEEE have done. The IPR issues are
complicated but does not have to mean that there is not an ownership
that remains by the openEHR foundation. However, I think it would
benefit the strength of our case if a certain version of the AOM is
available as a national/ISO standard with an independent life of the
rather small organisation with the obscure link to UCL.
Irrespective of this, I argued a year ago for the foundation to take
steps towards becoming a true international non profit foundation
breaking its ties witht the UCL as a founder. It is an anomaly in
today's world.
Kind regards
Gunnar
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Gunnar O Klein, professor of eHealth
Örebro University, Sweden
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