Facilitating the openEHR approach - organizational structures for defining high-quality archetypes

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Clinical Informatics
• Information Science

Background:

• openEHR archetypes facilitate rapid electronic patient record development and system interoperability.
• Achieving comprehensive semantic interoperability necessitates high-quality, internationally accepted archetypes.
• Current development and maintenance processes require enhancement to meet these needs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a model for distributed, cooperative development and adoption of openEHR archetypes.
• To facilitate the involvement of diverse health professions in archetype creation.
• To establish governance structures, including peer review, for archetype development.

Main Methods:

• A hierarchical committee structure was designed.
• A detailed archetype development process was described, incorporating different professional committees.
• Peer review mechanisms were integrated into the development workflow.

Main Results:

• The proposed model facilitates cooperative and distributed archetype development.
• The model incorporates a hierarchical structure of professional committees.
• The described process integrates peer review for quality assurance.

Conclusions:

• The presented model provides a framework for governing the collaborative development of openEHR archetypes.
• This approach supports the creation of high-quality archetypes essential for semantic interoperability.
• Effective archetype development requires structured collaboration across different health professions.