Templates under openEHR

Question

Hi to everybody!

At this moment I'm studying some concepts of the OpenEHR model: archetypes, ADL and templates. I found some documentation for the first two concepts (archetypes and ADL). I've downloaded some examples from the web page, I'm checking the CKM Manager to understand how are created archetypes, I've downloaded the workbench, etc.

But I've a lot of questions about templates on OpenEHR. And on the web page of the community they explain only a few things ("What's a template?", "Goal of templates" and "Why a template?"). Does anybody know where I can found more information about Templates under OpenEHR? Specially I would like to know the template definition language (or equivalent): how to create template, meaning of tags, how to translate templates, etc.

Thanks so much!

Answer 1

A Template is what you should use at a software level while archetypes are related more to the definition of the data handled by software. On a template you'll specify complete clinical documents in just one file, using many archetypes.

I recommend to use Operational Templates (OPT) at software because is just one big XML file with all the data and metadata you need to implement such clinical document (data structure, constraints, terminology).

To create OPTs you need the Template Designer by Ocean Informatics. The schema for templates is here: https://github.com/openEHR/reference-models/blob/master/models/openEHR/Release-1.0.2/XSD/Template.xsd

Maybe an OPT XSD is included in the Template Designer, not sure about this. You can ask on the openEHR email lists where the authors of the tool can give you more info. So, currently there is no template definition language. But fur the new version of ADL (under development), archetypes and templates will be specified using ADL.

Answer 2

Usually it is best on SO to ask a specific question.

You may find these recent discussions as well as previous discussion in the openEHR technical mailing list as well as the implementers mailing list helpful:

Templates

Archetypes

Tooling