--- In openhealth@yahoogroups.com, Will Ross <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Paul, > > See below. > > - - - - - - - - > > Can the OCC be accessed by non-OpenMRS sites? And, as a corollary, > can non-OpenMRS sites contribute to the concept coop? > > Thanks! > > - - - - - - - -
Hi Will, We certainly anticipate the OCC being a community-wide resource, but our first priority is to ensure great utility for OpenMRS implementations. We currently have a concept builder within our web-client (see http://demo.openmrs.org to play with it), and we would like to configure it such that when one builds a new concept that it allows net connected developers to search against the OCC to first see if that concept is available. If it's not, and the end implementation needs to create it, then we would envision that the app will be written in such a way as to automatically upload that concept to the OCC (supporting what is in theory a Creative Commons of concepts). Downloads of someone else's concept automatically creates a terminology "mapping" between that new site and all the other sites that use it. We feel strongly that it's a mistake for OpenMRS to become yet another standardized vocabulary for myriad reasons, but want to allow the concepts to evolve organically such that most commonly used terms rise to the top. If you've ever built clinical vocabularies, you'll quickly realize that there's great "guesswork" involved in it. That is, there are many ways to codify a given concept. It's fairly simple to codify something like a hemoglobin, but imagine if your system needed to example code a child's developmental screen milestone.. like walking at a year of age. I could code that in a number of ways. The question could be: "Walks at a year of age?" and the answer could be yes or no. The question could also be "Motor milestone passed" with an answer of "walks at a year of age". Both of those are "right", given how you use the data, and for a national standard to define that apriori without any real understanding of how that datum will be used over time, ensures that some of those initial decisions made by the standards body will be unhelpful or flat out wrong. Supporting a cooperative acknowledges that we don't know the right answer to a given concept's mapping right now, but we'll create a process that allows the community to figure that out in a pragmatic way. Indirectly, when enough people use a given flavor of a concept, it becomes a standard in and of itself. Once we augment the content of this cooperative with real world implementations, then I think it might serve as a valuable exemplar to the community as a whole when implementers wanted to know how the community "voted with their feet". -Paul
