2023 Year in Review
The OCL Community experienced transformative growth over 2023, with 80% growth in user accounts in OCL Online! We announced the Smart Dictionaries Community Initiative, officially launched the OCL FHIR Core (beta) and kicked off development on OCLv3 that we aim to launch in 2024, which will come with a host of new features and usability improvements. We established a statement of understanding with Health Level 7 and started work with the World Health Organization to support the SMART Guidelines initiative. OCL was also awarded the Amazon Web Services Health Equity Award, providing critical cloud infrastructure to maintain OCL Online and devops. Expect to hear more soon on all of these recent developments.
We also learned about exciting new OCL projects and implementations. A few highlights: the Kenya National Health Data Dictionary (KeNHDD) presented at HELINA in Cape Town, revitalization of Ethiopia’s NHDD with mappings to ICD-11, and Brazil’s use of OCL to roll out the International Patient Summary (IPS).
OCL continued to engage with the Digital Global Goods community, joining the Global Goods Innovator Summit in Tanzania hosted by Digital Square. In particular, in close collaboration with the OpenMRS community, we retired the OpenMRS Dictionary Manager and transitioned users over to the OCL TermBrowser, taking advantage of new features specifically to enhance dictionary management workflows. Expect to hear updates about integrations with other digital global goods in 2024.
We had new opportunities to connect with each other through our first ever in-person OCL workshop that we hosted at the OpenHIE 2023 event in Malawi. We also held a training workshop with the OpenMRS community with teams from Nigeria and Kenya in Mombasa, presented the emerging National Health Data Dictionaries (NHDD) Framework at the CDC Shiriki Webinar, and our very own Joe Amlung presented at the LOINC Conference in Atlanta.
Sneak preview: 2024 is OCL’s “Year of Community”!
2022 was OCL’s “Year of the User” and in 2023 we launched the multi-year Smart Dictionary Initiative. In a similar fashion, we’re excited to give you a sneak preview into our plans for 2024: OCL’s “Year of Community”! In 2024, we will measure success by how well we do strengthening our community of practice and collaboratively working toward OCL’s mission of accessible terminology tools and best practices. So what does this look like?
First, we want to continue with (and strengthen) the community activities that are working well:
- The 2024 Community Roadmap was released! Your inputs are welcome in the draft: 2024 Community Roadmap
- We host/participate in many community calls: OCL Dev, OCL Architecture, OCL for OpenMRS Squad, CIEL-OCL Check-in, and more!
- Continue the Smart Dictionary Initiative and Launch of OCLv3 in 2024
- Expand our Quarterly Community Showcases, organized by our TermBrowser Product Owner Joe Amlung, to highlight community member contributions and implementations
- Engage in community events: OHIE2024 in Sri Lanka, 2024 Global Goods Innovator Summit, HL7 Hackathon, and more
Second, we have a lot of ideas for things that we may want to start this year:
- Do a better job telling the OCL story: Document our community’s history and end the year with a Community/Impact Report
- Review and strengthen our OCL Community structure and processes by walking through the World Bank Community of Practice Framework: “Purpose-People-Practice”
- Adopt a Community and Developer Code of Conduct
- Amplify our Partnerships and Integrations with other Digital Global Good (e.g. OpenMRS, OpenELIS, OpenFn) and Standards Development Organizations (e.g. HL7, LOINC, WHO, SNOMED International)
- Start an OCL Users Group – we are always seeking user input, and organizing this into a small group that meets
- Finally, explore launching a new OCL Community Fellowship to help with all of these new activities!
We plan to workshop these ideas and incorporate a revised plan into the 2024 Community Roadmap in the coming weeks. We’d love to hear from you and invite you to join the conversation. The first opportunity is at our OCL Quarterly Showcase on Wednesday, January 24, 2024 at 1pm UTC (8am ET). You may also connect with us at any time in our other community calls or on OCL Chat.