Hi there.

I’ll like to introduce the ‘Introduction of Archetypes’ to OpenMRS project. You might find this project mentioned elsewhere as the archetypes integration project, Archetypes module project, OpenEHR-OpenMRS integration or … ().

The OpenMRS development project is a truly open open-source project – that means your ideas are not only welcome but also count in its continuous evolution.

I’ll begin by building (and getting) an understanding of what this archetypes project entails.

Please find few details of this on the wiki at http://openmrs.org/wiki/Archetypes_Module

My initial thoughts…

I’m working on giving the OpenMRS the ability to consume some tasty hamburgers called archetypes. For now, it survives on nice plenty chips called concepts and fields. Archetypes have concepts embedded in them.

There are different categories of archetypes (or hamburgers to continue the analogy) according to size and function – ENTRY, SECTION, CLUSTER, COMPOSITION. Compositions contain sections; sections contain entries (in a sort of hierarchy as you find in CMS like Joomla where you have sections, categories and items). Thus the ENTRY category contains the basic reusable units. ENTRY types include OBSERVATION, INSTRUCTION, ACTION, EVALUATION and ADMIN_ENTRY. Their functions can be guessed from their names and they roughly correspond to OBSERVATION, ORDER, DEMOGRAPHICS (very roughly…because that leaves INSTRUCTION and EVALUATION as part of OBSERVATION )

I think I will concentrate on OBSERVATION.

Please read more at

http://www.openehr.org/clinicalmodels/archetypes.html

http://oceaninformatics.biz/archetypes/MindMap/ArchetypeMap.html

http://svn.openehr.org/specification/TRUNK/publishing/openEHR/introducing_openEHR.pdf.

If you are new to openMRS, please see http://openmrs.org/wiki/OpenMRS. This project aims to make creating forms very easy – as easy as combining archetypes or reusing templates (from both an openEHR and Xforms point of view.)

Important database tables to look at:

Form,

Form field,

Field,

Concept

Learn more about the db at http://openmrs.org/wiki/OpenMRS_data_model

Would really appreciate your comments here…