openEHR International

Following nominations for the openEHR International Board held earlier this year we welcomed John Meredith of NHS Wales who replaced Dr Ian McNicoll as a representative for Individual and Professional membership. Jordi Piera Jiménez, PhD of the Catalan Health Service replaced Silje Ljosland Bakke as an Organisational representative, whilst Rachel Dunscombe from the NHS Digital Academy agreed to re-join the Board representing Individual members in the place of Prof Michael Miller, who sadly had to stand down for personal reasons. 

We have recently welcomed Peter Bouvier, who is working with openEHR on public relations and will be helping to promote the work of our Industry Partners and Organisational members and raise awareness on how openEHR is being used by the community. Pete is currently in the process of making contacts, finding out about openEHR, the community, and collating interviews that will be shared during 2023.

Education Program

We are delighted that the Education Program is up and running and following the establishment of an Education Program Board (EPB), the program is already making great strides towards developing openEHR educational and training resources. They are currently working on introducing a Recognised openEHR Educator Scheme, which should be finalised early in the New Year, with details being shared soon after.

Clinical Program

The Clinical Program - previously known as The Clinical Modelling Program - is being established with a wider scope, developed in response to a Request for Comments (RFC). Following the large number of applicants and requests from industry, the call for nominations for the new Clinical Program Board (CPB) has been extended until mid-January 2023. The Clinical Program Board will be formally established in the first quarter of 2023.

Specifications

The Specifications Editorial Committee (SEC) welcomed a number of new members in 2022: Dr Joost Holslag (Netherlands), Dr Sidharth Ramensh (India), and Dr Chunlan Ma (Australia), all of whom combine clinical experience with health informatics. The SEC has worked hard on a number of new releases, for Reference Model (core EHR info model), the Archetype specifications, and a major update of the openEHR REST APIs to use OpenAPI format and JSON Schema. Significant innovations in the core architecture to better support citation, reports, and virtual content are underway. SEC call minutes for 2022 available here.

Discourse

Discourse (the openEHR discussion site) continues to be a great place for industry partners, organisations and members to share information and knowledge about openEHR. As we increase our base and larger Partners join openEHR, we’re able to get involved in even more of the important work that is being requested by the community. 

Membership Growth

As openEHR use, interest and activity increases, the number of individual, professional, organisational and Industry Partners joining openEHR continues to grow year on year.

During 2022 we welcomed a number of new partners including EY, Microsoft, Dedalus, Karkinos Healthcare, IN2, and NeoEHR. 

Affiliate Activity

We have also seen an increase in Affiliates - groups or organisations with the capacity to further the vision and mission of openEHR via non-profit localisation activities in specific geographies. Current affiliates include the Netherlands, whilst Germany, Sweden, Portugal, Spain and the UK are in the process of setting up.

Website

The new openEHR website went live this year, with new features and improved functionality, making it easier for visitors to find information about openEHR as well as a minor change to the existing logo. If you are using the old logo on your website or documentation, please do update to the new logo available on the website.

Looking Ahead to 2023

The newly established Cross Boards Steering Group (XBSG) will bring together the CIC Board and Program Boards in a formal dedicated forum to better communicate and manage cross-cutting issues, support and cooperation. In preparation for this, an initial meeting has been held and quarterly meetings are planned for 2023. In the coming year, we’ll be working more closely with the Program Boards, and providing funding to enable them to fulfil strategy and roadmaps.

We hope to improve openEHR awareness by promoting event activity. Any members speaking at or running events with an 'openEHR hat on' please do make us aware of the detail.

The use of openEHR within healthcare is growing rapidly, and the openEHR community is expanding to meet this increased demand for patient-centred health data. As always, the openEHR International Board we would like to extend thanks to the openEHR community - whose collaboration, exchange of information, promotion and willingness to be involved is what makes the openEHR vision possible.