Hi everyone,
We’re not going to hold an OHIE-TS call on August 7 — we don’t yet have a clear roadmap for the next session. Rather than run a directionless call, here’s a recap of the themes from our June 5 reconnect, plus a short poll to help shape what we tackle next.
What we heard on the June 5 call
- Open vs. proprietary code systems — Several participants raised the tension between open and proprietary terminology systems, especially in LMIC contexts: the risk of building on an open code system (e.g. SNOMED CT via a national namespace) and hitting a licensing wall months later before going to production. WHO’s DPI-H effort is pushing an “open standards” framing (a technical/access definition, not necessarily “free”) — but acknowledged there’s no clear path yet for something like SNOMED or ICD-11 medication content that avoids payment barriers entirely.
- RACI matrix for national deployments — A recurring pain point: unclear ownership. Who acquires code systems? Installs the TS software? Builds value sets? Trains users on using the service? Writes the governing policy? Coordinates across ministries? Client and facility registries often have an obvious ministry owner; the terminology service is “the tricky one.” Ask: co-develop a RACI matrix for successful OpenHIE terminology service deployments.
- Deployment patterns — Caution raised against the anti-pattern of running TS, SHR, and validation on a single instance. Need for guidance on properly separating these concerns, plus how to guarantee a single source of truth for codable concepts at national scale. Also a caution that OCL shouldn’t be marketed as the only option, even though it’s the one most discussed in this forum.
- Interface terminologies — Interest in interface terminology models (e.g., CIEL) as a way to give clinicians a trusted, usable vocabulary while pushing mapping complexity elsewhere. Flagged explicitly as a good topic for a future call.
Note: These sit on top of the broader context Jonathan Payne presented — the terminology maturity model, the National Health Data Dictionary framework, and the WHO/ITU DPI-H reference architecture work — which is surfacing a gap around a “semantic governance infrastructure” layer that spans terminology + logical information models.
Quick poll (~5 min): what should we prioritize for October?
Rearrange the options below — whatever you’d most want us to dig into next should be at the top!
- RACI matrix for national terminology deployments
- Open vs. proprietary code system decision-making
- Terminology deployment patterns / architecture guidance
- Interface terminologies (e.g., CIEL) deep dive
- Something else — reply below!
Next call
We’re targeting October for the next live OHIE-TS call. Thanks for bearing with us — keep the conversation going here in the meantime.