Evaluation of openEHR Repositories Regarding Standard Compliance

Fechner M, Brix TJ, Hardt T, Oehm J, Dugas M, Storck M

Abstract

We evaluated three repositories implementing the emerging healthcare data standard openEHR for their standard compliance, completeness and vendor lock-in. We found the basic functionality to work consistently across all tested repositories. At the same time, no vendor supports the entire API yet. Some functions like template listing differ slightly in their behavior. Some vendors offer additional custom APIs that are easier to use but lead to vendor lock-in. The openEHR standard itself is designed inconsistently regarding data formats and is missing some basic functionality, for example deletion of templates. With openEHR being a young standard, these issues may be resolved in future releases.