Healthc Inform Res.  2013 Dec;19(4):271-277. 10.4258/hir.2013.19.4.271.

Archetype Model-Driven Development Framework for EHR Web System

• Kobayashi
• Kimura E
• Ishihara K

• KMID: 2229502
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.4258/hir.2013.19.4.271

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
This article describes the Web application framework for Electronic Health Records (EHRs) we have developed to reduce construction costs for EHR sytems.
METHODS
The openEHR project has developed clinical model driven architecture for future-proof interoperable EHR systems. This project provides the specifications to standardize clinical domain model implementations, upon which the ISO/CEN 13606 standards are based. The reference implementation has been formally described in Eiffel. Moreover C# and Java implementations have been developed as reference. While scripting languages had been more popular because of their higher efficiency and faster development in recent years, they had not been involved in the openEHR implementations. From 2007, we have used the Ruby language and Ruby on Rails (RoR) as an agile development platform to implement EHR systems, which is in conformity with the openEHR specifications.
RESULTS
We implemented almost all of the specifications, the Archetype Definition Language parser, and RoR scaffold generator from archetype. Although some problems have emerged, most of them have been resolved.
CONCLUSIONS
We have provided an agile EHR Web framework, which can build up Web systems from archetype models using RoR. The feasibility of the archetype model to provide semantic interoperability of EHRs has been demonstrated and we have verified that that it is suitable for the construction of EHR systems.

Keyword

Electronic Health Records; Internet; Computing Methodologies; Automatic Data Processing

MeSH Terms

Automatic Data Processing
Computing Methodologies
Electronic Health Records
Indonesia
Internet
Semantics

Figure

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  Figure 1 Archetype Definition Language (ADL) parser performance test comparing the Ruby and Java implementations. The Ruby parser requires more CPU time than the Java parser.

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  Figure 2 Example of a Ruby mix-in of the DATE_TIME class in the Assumed Types Library.

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  Figure 3 Sample circular import code in Java. Class A imports Class B and Class B imports Class A circularly.

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  Figure 4 Sample noncircular import code in Ruby. After class A requires class B, both classes are loaded in memory. In this situation, even if class A is required by class B, Ruby does not load class A again.

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