Towards a repository for managing archetypes for electronic health records

Background: With the advent of openEHR Version 1.0 a common Electronic Health Records (EHR) architecture has been defined to pursue the aim of having ubiquitous information available when and where it is needed. Objectives: To analyse the functional requirements for supporting Domain Knowledge Governance with Information Technology (like authoring or updating archetypes) and present a prototype implementation. Methods: Requirements analysis using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and incremental prototyping; also a series of archetype workshops were conducted. Results: For a web-based archetype repository, a total of four top-level use cases, 23 refining use cases for 5 different actors, are found to be essential. A prototype implementing some of these use cases has been developed. Discussion and conclusions: We believe that Domain Knowledge Governance is necessary independent of the actual approach and methodology chosen for EHR systems. Appropriate information technological support is required to support a clear process for authoring, updating, managing, disseminating knowledge in archetypes as well as archetype version control.