Who we are
About us
Open Concept Lab is an open-source community and a Digital Public Good, building the shared terminology infrastructure that health systems around the world depend on.
Our community
Supporting a collaborative ecosystem
Open Concept Lab is built and sustained by a community of software developers, informaticians and process engineers. They work alongside the people the platform serves:
Terminology authors
Ministries of health, standards organizations and dictionary administrators who develop and maintain healthcare terminology, whether for international standards or local dictionaries.
Terminology consumers
Implementers and health programs who use OCL resources in the provision and management of local healthcare services.
Our foundations
A shared commitment to open health terminology
History
Open Concept Lab (OCL) began in 2012, as a proof of concept to show metadata can be stored and subscribed from a central repository. OCL helps to streamline and standardize data across entities. This includes mapping similar definitions across entities.
Vision
OCL imagines a world where an inclusive and interoperable platform for creating and accessing standardized healthcare terminology radically improves the efficiency and equity of healthcare services.
Mission
Open Concept Lab sees terminology as core to an effective healthcare system. Its mission is to provide a platform and encode best practices that support the deployment and implementation of health terminology.
Community values
Supporting best practices in healthcare terminology
Accessible and standard driven
Providing industry-leading terminology tooling and databases in both emerging and mature settings, no matter the challenges in the health care delivery environment, while meeting needs and boosting accessibility.
Interoperable and sustainable
Empowering contributors to create their own metadata and support localization, all while promoting best practices in standardized content from reference terminologies. The centralized cloud-based platform also supports high-level, reusable healthcare functionality to enable global contribution.
Community-driven & inclusive
Openness, transparency, and trustworthiness is key to our community processes. This is demonstrated by the builds and content from diverse contributors, capacity strengthening and supporting professional growth for all community members, and by balancing the engagement and inclusion of stakeholders with obligations to preserve integrity, interoperability, and comparability of the data deployed.
Community governance
Leadership Committee
The OCL Leadership Committee provides strategic guidance and oversight for Open Concept Lab. Its members are organizations that have made a sustained investment in open health terminology — implementers, standards bodies and terminology maintainers who use and contribute to the platform. The committee reviews OCL's roadmap and priorities, advises on governance and sustainability, and helps ensure the platform continues to serve the global health community as a Digital Public Good. The current membership will be published here shortly.