What is EHRbase?

EHRbase is an is an open source software backend for clinical application systems and electronic health records. The underlying openEHR specification describes an open platform architecture that has proven to enable the development of full-blown clinical application systems including electronic medical records inside hospitals (e.g. DIPS Arena, Tieto Lifecare), pratice management software (e.g. Hove Total), care documentation (e.g. Nedap Wondzorgproces, Code24) and close-loop medication (e.g. Better Meds). It also is used for the provision of a longitudinal health record in countries like Scotland, Malta, Slovenia and Finland.

openEHR – the open IT platform for healthcare

Besides being a robust and proven way of building clinical application systems, openEHR introduces the open platform as a new paradigm in healthcare. This is a radically different approach to address the challenges of interoperability and data accessibility in healthcare. Instead of connecting data silos by messages, openEHR allows to separate applications from the data. Instead of exchanging data between systems, different applications access the data which is stored in accordance with a shared electronic health record architecture and is defined and standardized in clinical information models. This approach prevents new data silos and eliminates the need for interoperability. Every single datapoint within the platform is described by a data model and can be accessed through an openly defined and standardized REST API and the model-based Archetype Query Language.

The open platform enables the long-term storage of digital patient data in a coherent and longitudinal, vendor- and technology-neutral electronic health record!

Why use EHRbase?

While openEHR is an open specification, openEHR platforms were mainly based on proprietary technology. While this does not contradict the open data approach, it hampers the availabilty of the technology and puts restrictions on its use. EHRbase’s mission is to make the open platform a commodity, giving hospitals, software vendors, governments, researchers and patients the powerful technology at their fingertips. EHRbase is licensed under the commerical-friendly Apache 2 open source license, making it a viable option for the public sector and private companies. EHRbase allows organizations to embrace open standards and save a significant amount of development costs at the same time.

Features

Below is an inexhaustive list of the various features provided by EHRbase. More is being added with every major release:

  • openEHR Reference Model 1.0.4
  • Transactions
  • openEHR REST API
    • EHR
    • EHR_STATUS
    • VERSIONED_EHR_STATUS
    • COMPOSITION
      • Flat Format
      • Canonical XML
      • Canonical JSON
      • VERSIONED_COMPOSITION
    • DIRECTORY
    • CONTRIBUTION
    • QUERY
    • DEFINITIONS
      • WebTemplate Format
      • ADL 1.4 Template
      • Stored Queries
  • EHRbase Admin API
    • SECURITY
      • OAuth 2 Support
      • Basic Auth Support
      • SSL
    • EHR (physical delete)
    • COMPOSITION (physical delete)
    • DIRECTORY (physical delete)
    • TEMPLATE (physical delete, forced overwrite)
  • EHRbase Status API
  • Metric and Monitoring Endpoints
  • ATNA Logging
    • EHR
    • Composition
    • Query
    • User Login
  • Attribute Based Access Control Connectivity
  • Configurations for Cloud Deployment
  • Data Validation
    • Based on openEHR Template
    • Based on FHIR Terminology Server
  • Archetype Query Language
    • Aggregation functions (count, max, min etc.)
    • Contains operators AND, OR and nesting
    • ORDER BY
    • Partial Paths Queries
    • Filter by name attributes
    • Embedded FHIR Terminology Server calls
  • Software Development Kit
    • Auto-generated DTO Java classes from openEHR Templates
    • (De-)Serialization from/to DTOs
    • Queries based on DTOs classes
    • AQL parser and serializer