About

My name is Sam Heard and I am Chair of the openEHR Foundation

I have begun this blog to provide a space to record some ideas about openEHR. I hope it helps for others to review some of the issues that arise as part of an international effort to assist in the creation of an environment where electronic health records take on a life of their own.

My vision is a world where hospitals, office-based practices and citizens hold their health records independent of any particular application. This is only possible if:

• There is a standard expression (logical specification) of the health record that is agreed by sufficient parties
• The APIs to the instances of these records and the serialisation formats are agreed
• The content of the health record can change and evolve independent of the software implementation
• The content can be queried to an arbitrary level of detail
• The content can be displayed even if it is unknown to a particular application

I better get on with it.