Some proposals for the formalisation of the openEHR governance

Some proposals for the formalisation of the openEHR governance

Gunnar Klein, 2014-09-17

Background

Until now, the openEHR foundation has been working fairly well without much formal rules for its governance. However, as the use increases and moves from interesting pilot projects to large scale national/regional implementations and industrial products with large investments I think it is time to improve the management without adding undue heavy procedures with little value.

One issue which needs fixing is the discrepancy between the current description of the processes for governance on the web (a bit complicated, not well understood) and real life where many of the steps or organisational units, types of membership etc simply do not exist. While asking for some formalities, I think a main reason why it is som obscure today and not implemented is that the proposed rules from 2012 were too complicated.

In this document I include in an annex copies of texts downloaded 2014-09-16 from the openEHR web and wiki on the hyptothetical governance. In my proposal I suggest a common wording for these three”Programmes” of openEHR: Specification, Clinical Modelling and Software. For Localisation and possible other activities on for instance training and promotion of openEHR I suggest different types of management.

In the discussion yesterday nobody seemed to know the real present legal status of the Foundation but we believed it is presently in close ties with University College London which is operating accounting etc and also have a special role in providing directors to the openEHR Foundation Board which seems to sit above the openEHR Management Board. It was expressed by several persons that openEHR should be a true international non-profit organisation and not linked to a University which may not have any long term committment to it. Of course it needs to be incorporated in one country, possibly continued to be England and following that legislation. Another possible location may be Belgium.

Note that the proposal here to really establish Programme Committees including a Clinical Modelling Programme Committee means that the process proposed by Ian and Heather for the agreeed four month sprint on 69 archetypes shall be modified to include an endoresement/formal decision by a Programme Committee before they are published as approved openEHR artefacts. I think this shall not need to take a lot of extra time but a process which adds credibility to the process and may protect the main editors from being personally responsible alone for any decisions that may not always reach unanimity.


The Foundation

The openEHR Foundation is an international non profit organisation. It should have ONE upper steering body herien called the openEHR Management Board. The details of appointments of directors and other rules need to be available easily accessible on the web in the form of a Statutes document which must also contain rules for changes to the statutes.

Membership

There shall be two major types of members, all based on an appropriate yearly fee determined by the Board:

a)      Individual members

b)      Organisational members which can appoint a number of persons as their representatives and acting in many ways as the individual members.
This includes industrial suppliers of information systems that use or consider using openEHR specifications, Academic institutions and Health care organisations that use EHRs or organise local, regional or national clinical modelling

Comment: I suggest we skip the idea of Qualified members elected by the already established. In addition to these real members we can have persons that are users of the mailing lists or CKMT.

Management Board

This body is elected by the members for a period of two years (possible to renew) with the chair/president nominated specially. The Board decides on matters related to general operation, fees, budget, contracts with co-operating parties (including where the organisation may undertake a task for an external body). The board also appoints the Programme Committees (taking proposals from the concerned parties).

Programme Committees

 There are presently three programme committees:

a)     Specification

b)    Clinical modelling

c)     Software

The Programme Committee is the decision making group for the Programme acitivites which includes the task of defining projects, their scope, methodology and leadership. The Programme Committee decides within itself on the role of two co-chairs to be communicated to the Management Board. The Programme Committee also makes all decisions regarding final publications of its results approved by the openEHR Foundation; Specifications, Clinical Models and Software for downloading in the form of running applications or source code. The programme Committees are also responsible for putting in place appropriate maintenenace procedures for its deliverables.

The recorded minutes of the formal Committee meetings shall be publicly available to all members (possibly anybody on the web).

The work of the programmes shall be characterised by the spirit of seeking consensus, open access and contributions from all of the members of openEHR also seeking contributions from other interested parties who are not formal members of openEHR. This includes co-operation with other standards development organisations. An important principle of the openEHR Foundation is to apporve for final publication only products where there is sufficient evidence of working in real implementations, prefereably two independent ones.


openEHR rules – Collection of statements from the web 2014-09-16

The foundation

http://www.openehr.org/about/foundation

The openEHR Foundation is currently a not-for-profit company, limited by guarantee. Its founders were University College London, UK and Ocean Informatics Pty Ltd, Australia. It is regulated under the UK Companies Acts 1985 and 1989. The name 'openEHR' has been registered internationally as a Trade Mark.

As part of the new governance, the Foundation will be recreated as a new not-for-profit company, possibly in the form of a UK Community Interest Company, or else in the form of a Private company limited by guarantee (the same as the current form), commonly used for non-profits in the UK. The new organisation will be created by consultation of the interim board and prospective organisational members.

Program Committees and Qualified Members

https://sites.google.com/a/openehrfoundation.org/foundation/home/foundation-committees

Migration rules

http://www.openehr.org/wiki/display/oecom/Specification+Governance+-+migration+process

Specification Program Terms of Reference proposed 2012

http://www.openehr.org/wiki/display/oecom/Specification+Program+Terms+of+Reference

Specification governance as it is described now

http://www.openehr.org/programs/specification/governance

Software Governance

http://www.openehr.org/programs/software/governance

Clinical modelling programme

There is really no special heading on governance on the web (unlike the situation for the other openEHR programmes). The only text to be found on this is this paragraph:

” Clinical Knowledge Governance

The openEHR Clinical Knowledge Manager (CKM) (available here) is an online application that supports knowledge governance within and across the health enterprise. In practice, it is a system for collaborative development, management and publishing of a wide range of clinical knowledge resources including archetypes, templates and terminology subsets.