openEHR ARB Has Openings!

Thomas Beale, Chair of the openEHR Architecture Review Board has posted an announcement calling for more community involvement in further solidifying the openEHR healthcare information specifications.

The email is posted below and it contains several good links regarding openEHR ARB activities.

If you are not yet familiar with openEHR you may be interested in it’s almost two decades of history: http://www.openehr.org/about/origins.html

The announcement email:

Dear all,

on behalf of Prof David Ingram (UCL; chairman of the openEHR Foundation), I would like to announce the reconstituted Architectural Review Board (ARB) of openEHR – http://www.openehr.org/about/arb.html

We would like to welcome the following new members:
John Arnett, UK NHS. In his current role of Interoperability Architect, John is responsible for developing architectural frameworks and design methodologies for optimising the development, use and interoperability of openEHR content models throughout the NHS
* Rong Chen, MD, Cambio Healthcare Systems (Sweden). Rong leads the Java openEHR development project.
* and welcome back the previous members:
Eric Browne, consultant, former head of Clinical Information at NeHTA (Australia)
* Tim Cook, independent consultant, author of Python implementation of openEHR
* Sam Heard MD, Ocean Informatics, active in the clinical modelling, design and tooling for openEHR
* Dipak Kalra MD, senior lecturer CHIME, UCL, UK and chief editor of the CEN EN13606 standard
* We would also particularly like to thank David Lloyd who was an active and valued member up until Release 1.0.1.
For this year, I have agreed to continue as the chair of the ARB.

Our eventual aim during 2008/9 is to expand the ARB somewhat further, to about 10 members, so as to better represent new countries and health sectors starting to use openEHR. We hope to do this via nominations from the community. (People interested in nominating should email me in the first instance.)

The activities of the ARB are explained on the ARB page, and follow the Terms of Reference found there. They consist of:
deciding on the release plan of openEHR – see http://www.openehr.org/specifications/spec_roadmap_2008.html
* processing Problem Reports (PRs) and Change Requests (CRs), which are logged on the Jira server (http://www.openehr.org/issues/browse/SPEC?report=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.project:roadmap-panel)
* A general description of the governance of the specifications can be found at http://www.openehr.org/specifications/specs_governance.html . One point to note is that the ARB’s function is to review change requests, not to actually do the work. Changes are implemented by project teams or individuals (see below; some ARB members may be involved in such work). The aim of the process is to remain lightweight, fast, and implementation-based. The involvement of the community is essential, and occurs by various means:
discussions on the mailing lists, resulting in the raising of CRs and PRs
* direct raising of a PR on the Jira server (NOTE, a dedicated PR tracker will be put in place for this within the next week or so)
* participation in project groups working on CRs, i.e. changed or new specifications. Each such group has its own wiki page in the specifications space at http://www.openehr.org/wiki/display/spec/Specifications+Home
* We hope the needs of the community will be better served by recent improvements in both process and tools, and by the new ARB. As always we are reliant on feedback and participation in order to continue to grow.

The roadmap at http://www.openehr.org/specifications/spec_roadmap_2008.html gives an idea of the work ahead of us all, and when achieved, I believe will significantly expand the range of health applications and systems for which openEHR will be a natural choice.

best wishes,

– thomas beale

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