Proposal for a New Workgroup: openEHR and OMOP Workgroup

General
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Hello to the vibrant OHDSI community :earth_africa:

In today’s digital health landscape, the true value of health data emerges when it can be effectively used not only in day-to-day clinical care (primary use) but also in research, policymaking, health technology assessment, and evidence generation (secondary use). Key standards such as openEHR and OMOP-CDM each play a crucial role in this continuum: openEHR enables rich, structured clinical data modeling at the point of care, while OMOP provides a powerful framework for large-scale secondary use and analysis.

I am Somayeh Abedian, an official member of the openEHR Foundation, and I have been working for many years in the field of digital health, data standards, and interoperability. With the support and collaboration of my colleagues at openEHR, I am pleased to propose the creation of a new workgroup within OHDSI: openEHR and OMOP Workgroup.

This workgroup aims to establish a conceptual and technical bridge between openEHR and OMOP, enabling a seamless pathway for leveraging health data from clinical recording to multi-center research and evidence-based analytics.

Background

With the rapid growth of structured health data modeled through openEHR archetypes and templates, and the increasing use of OMOP-CDM in data-driven research, the need for a systematic and precise connection between these two standards is more pressing than ever.

openEHR, with its clinically driven modeling approach, is a powerful tool for capturing, structuring, and exchanging health data, and in some countries, it is already being used for secondary use purposes as well. However, bridging openEHR with OMOP-CDM can significantly extend this potential, paving the way for multi-center studies, large-scale analytics, and advanced evidence generation. This workgroup seeks to close this conceptual and technical gap.

Mission and Objectives

The mission of the openEHR and OMOP Workgroup is to build an international, interdisciplinary community of researchers and practitioners to:

  • Develop and share knowledge on semantic and technical convergence between openEHR and OMOP
  • Identify key needs, opportunities, and challenges in transforming data and concepts across the two standards
  • Draft initial frameworks and guidelines to support collaboration and data exchange
  • Explore the role of AI tools in automating mapping and transformation processes
  • Develop prototypes and proof-of-concept pipelines demonstrating interoperability in action

Challenges to Address

Some of the key challenges this workgroup aims to tackle include:

  • Structural differences between openEHR’s archetype-based modeling and OMOP-CDM’s relational data tables
  • Semantic mapping and vocabulary harmonization between the two ecosystems
  • Differences in data granularity and representation of clinical concepts
  • The need for shared approaches to specific data types such as PGHD, PROMs, and PREMs…

:handshake: Call for Collaboration

Several colleagues and researchers have already expressed their interest in joining this initiative. If you would like to play a role in shaping the future of collaboration between openEHR and OMOP, I warmly invite you to reply here or contact me directly so I can plan our first coordination meeting.

Together, we can take an important step toward unlocking the full potential of health data and building a strong bridge between the openEHR and OHDSI communities.

Best regards,
Somayeh Abedian, Ph.D
Senior Researcher in Digital Health and Interoperability

so.abedian@gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/somayeh-abedian-974ba227/

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This sounds like a great opportunity.

Tagging friends who may be interested and can help. @DaveraG can share her successes in building community for interoperability with her work leading our FHIR-OMOP WG. @Cynthia_Sung would likely see value with connections to the OHDSI Africa chapter, as there had been similar work aimed at fostering collaboration with openMRS (@pbiondich ). @Andy_Kanter is likely keen on the vocabulary harmonization efforts, as would @Alexdavv .

And @ekatzman and I can help you with the logistics of setting up the Workgroup assuming you have shared interest from the community to move it forward.

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I would love to be involved in this. Severin Kohler and myself have been working a lot on this on the past year. We released a library of 194 mappings from openEHR archetypes to OMOP CDM and a tooling to execute them. We have also some findings on how to solve some of the detected gaps. We will be presenting this as EHRCON25 in Barcelona, but happy to discuss the topic in other meetings

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I’d definitely love to join because I’ve been exposed to the openEHR via training and reviewing some of the content modeled with the archetypes approach.

@Diego_Bosca_Tomas @somayeh_abedian Do you plan to have the OMOP session/discussion during your event?

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Hello somayeh_abedian and Welcome to OHDSI! Thanks @Patrick_Ryan for mentioning our work. I was so happy to see this WG forming… In fact - Rachel Dumscombe mentioned this WG’s formation in our webinar panel re: the “Converge or Collide?” paper this am only a couple hours ago. Its quite the experience being a bridge between two communities. I’m happy to both support your work and share any experience you may find relevant from our FHIR to OMOP IG build and WG activities.

FYI: The SDO convergence message has really been met with an astounding level of support & enthusiasm. As a lead up to our panel this am - I did an internet deep dive into the impact of the converge messaging from our editorial in JMIR late last year. The impact report is here, it provides some insights to the heretofore pairwise projects emerging among the 3 standards, and now we can add your WG and its efforts as well! We have a series follow-up papers in the works - will be happy to work with you as your journey progresses

I support your group’s formation with great enthusiasm!. Please reach out any time
davera.gabriel@evidentli.com

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Thank you, @Patrick_Ryan! I really appreciate your support and the connections you’ve shared. I’m excited to work with you and the team to take the next steps in forming this workgroup.

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@Diego_Bosca_Tomas
That’s really great, Diego… such an impressive contribution! :raised_hands:
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend the Barcelona meeting due to an important work commitment that was scheduled in advance. Last year’s conference in London was excellent, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy this one too… We definitely need to hear about your valuable work and experience in our workgroup discussions — it will be an important contribution to shaping the direction of this initiative, specially as you are senior openEHR fellow :wink:

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Dear @DaveraG,
Thank you so much for your warm welcome and encouraging message :tulip:
Your valuable experience in building bridges between the two communities is truly inspiring, and I’m glad that we can benefit from it as we work toward standard convergence and strengthening the connection between openEHR and FHIR–OMOP.
I have previously spoken with Rachel on this topic, and I’m very pleased that she shares this perspective and also mentioned it during the webinar…
I am truly grateful for the support from you and @Patrick_Ryan, which means a lot at this early stage. Thank you also for sharing your contact information and for offering your support — I will certainly reach out as we move forward.

I hope we can start close collaboration soon and take meaningful steps together toward building stronger connections between the openEHR and OHDSI communities. Looking forward to working closely with you!

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Fantastic, Alexander …we’d love to have you on board! :raised_hands:
Regarding the Barcelona conference, I believe Diego will be there, and there are many plans for sharing experiences and insights.

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Hi Somayeh, I like your proposal. I have been involved in some FHIR-OMOP-openEHR initiatives. I am less experienced in openEHR by comparison, but I would love to make or strenghten the connections. It would be fruitful for the OHDSI community to learn from the way openEHR represents semantics/meaning. I see that you also propose to focus/combine efforts for PROMs and PREMs and other patient-contributed data - would love to explore that. I have been working in that domain for some time.

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Great initiative!!

I know there are a number of people and organizations in Sweden with interest in this topic. It would also be a great way to engage more people from Sweden in the OHDSI community.

Christian Högberg
OMOP 4 Sweden Leader

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@chogberg

Dear Christian,
Thank you so much for your kind words …I am really glad to hear your thoughts! Yes, I know that some great initiatives have already started in Sweden. In fact, I have previously had some contacts for sharing and discussing in community meetings from your colleagues, so I am aware of these projects, for example Rikard Lövström at Region Stockholm that I know they are doing valuable projects!

In the same spirit, regarding this working group, I also informed him. It would be wonderful if other experts could join and contribute.
Many Thanks!

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@Sebastiaan_van_Sandi

Hi Sebastiaan,
Thank you for your kind feedback! It’s great to hear about your FHIR–OMOP–openEHR work and your focus on PROMs, PREMs, and patient data as well! that’s also a key area for me.
For me it doesn’t matter whether we are stronger in openEHR or OMOP, what matters is bringing them together and learning from each other, especially with your fantastic experience that I know you have. This group is exactly the place for that. Thanks :blush:

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We’ve been driving this work from the openEHR side.

To add some context:
So far, we have 194 mappings from openEHR to OMOP available. I shared this project also once here, if anybody wants any links and take a look:
:link: ETL Engine declarative language – paper about integrating openEHR records into the OMOP CDM

This represents a solid foundation that has been steadily developed within the openEHR community. It includes a mapping language we developed to define and document mappings to OMOP from openEHR and an engine to execute those. This enables openEHR-based platforms to transform large portions of their data into OMOP out of the box, since it leverages the archetype-based and multi-layered architecture of openEHR.

Of course, there are still open questions and areas to refine, so I’m very much looking forward to contributing to the working group :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

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@SevKohler
Thank you so much dear Severin for your comment and for sharing these valuable insights :tulip:
It’s really great to see such a strong foundation already in place …with all the support, experience, and energy, I’m sure the working group will start off powerfully and achieve great results.
I know a lot of work has already been done, and of course, new topics and ideas are emerging every day, which makes this journey even more dynamic and inspiring.
Really looking forward to seeing everyone in our first WG meeting! :raised_hands:

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By the way, we also presented at EHRCON how an openEHR vocabulary would look like in OMOP. I think this is feasible to autogenerate them from existing openEHR archetypes and even add mapping info (as @SevKohler said, we have already generated 194 processable mappings that we could add to the concept_relationship table

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Hi @Diego_Bosca_Tomas
Very good! And we even have a pipeline for such sort of submissions.
Do you want me to guide you through?
I’m curious if we can integrate OMOCL language and files into the automated pipeline within our Vocabulary system.

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