FAQ
Everything people ask us most often about Open Concept Lab — what it is, how to use it, what it costs, and how the open-source project works. Can't find your question? Email us — a person reads every message.
Jump to: About OCL · Using OCL · Pricing and the subscription model · Open source and self-hosting
About OCL
What is the Open Concept Lab (OCL)?
OCL is an open-source terminology management platform to help collaboratively manage, publish, and use metadata in the cloud alongside the global community.
This collaborative terminology management platform helps organizations realize the benefit of health information standards and makes this content available to implementers everywhere.
OCL is more than a set of open-source cloud based tools that supports health care terminology. It is a community of terminologists, developers and implementers that help to collaboratively manage, publish and use metadata in the cloud within the global community.
How can I join the OCL community?
Several ways, all of them free:
- Come to a community call. Our calls are open to anyone — schedules and joining links are on the home page.
- Join the conversation on OCL Chat, where the community troubleshoots, shares experiences and introduces itself.
- Contribute on GitHub — the pinned repositories cover our main work streams and tools.
- Join a Squad. OCL organizes much of its work into community-led squads that own specific projects. See Introducing the OCL Squad Model.
- Get the newsletter for release notes, community-call reminders and the occasional deeper piece. No fixed schedule, and you can leave any time. Subscribe here.
What is the difference between the TermBrowser and the Terminology Service?
The OCL TermBrowser is the primary tool for searching terminology and other metadata loaded into OCL.
The OCL Terminology Service is the back-bone of the OCL Toolkit. It is an open-source solution for the management and publication of standardized and local terminologies.
OCL Online is the online instance for hosting your terminology service needs in the cloud, without needing to download the software to a private server.
OCL Mapper is our AI-assisted tool for mapping local codes to standard terminologies like LOINC, ICD-10 and SNOMED.
Who is behind OCL?
OCL is a community project with a small core team and a Leadership Committee of organizations who provide guidance and oversight — GlobalConnect, Regenstrief Institute, Apelon, OpenMRS, HL7 International and CIEL. Many more organizations have funded or contributed to the platform over the years; you can see them on our About us page.
Open Concept Lab LLC is the legal owner of the OCL codebase, trademarks and other OCL materials, and maintains the software's public license. This entity represents the OCL project in legal and financial matters.
Is OCL a Digital Public Good?
Yes. OCL was recognized by the Digital Public Goods Alliance as a Digital Public Good, meaning it complies with the nine indicators of the DPG Standard. See OCL is a Digital Public Good.
Using OCL
What kind of terminologies and other content can I find on OCL?
OCL functions similar to a GitHub specifically for health terminology. Meaning, anyone is free to load content, like a data dictionary or value set, to OCL and to make it publicly available.
The OCL team works to publish reference vocabularies, such as LOINC and SNOMED GPS. OCL is also the primary distributor of the CIEL interface terminology, which is used as the basis of open concept dictionaries in many OpenMRS implementations throughout the world.
How do I get started?
Browse and search OCL Online without an account, then create a free account when you want to save work, follow repositories or build your own dictionary.
Information for OpenMRS dictionary managers
The OpenMRS Dictionary Manager client focused on the workflow of an OpenMRS implementer managing an OpenMRS dictionary within OCL, drawing on concepts & mappings from CIEL, and synchronizing the concept collection as a dictionary on one or more OpenMRS server(s). It has been deprecated — its capabilities now live in the OCL TermBrowser. See Using OCL for OpenMRS concept dictionary management for the recommended workflow.
Can I use OCL's API?
Yes. OCL exposes a REST API and a FHIR-enabled terminology service. The REST API is available to everyone, rate-limited. The FHIR terminology service has a free preview, with full use on paid plans. Higher rate limits come with a paid plan — see pricing. Full documentation is at docs.openconceptlab.org.
Where can I get help?
- OCL Chat — usually the fastest answer, from the community and the team.
- Documentation — guides and API reference.
- Raise an issue on GitHub — for bugs and feature requests. Every OCL repository shares one tracker, OpenConceptLab/ocl_issues.
- Email us — for anything that doesn't fit the above.
Pricing and the subscription model
Is OCL introducing paid plans?
Yes. OCL is introducing a subscription model, and we're telling you about it before it starts so you can plan.
Donor funding for global health has fallen sharply, and that has reached OCL too, just as a growing community and new AI capabilities are raising the cost of running OCL Online. Paid plans will fund OCL's infrastructure, development and community stewardship, and help keep these tools available to as many teams as possible.
We announced the plans and prices on September 28, 2026, and they're on the pricing page. Nothing has changed on your account yet: checkout isn't open, and no account has been restricted because of subscriptions.
When does it start?
Subscriptions open on November 1, 2026, with a grace period to December 1, 2026 for existing accounts.
- New accounts created from November 1 subscribe to use paid-plan features.
- Existing accounts, meaning anyone who signed up before November 1, have until December 1, 2026 to subscribe if they use premium functionality. Your account will maintain its current functionality until then.
We'll email everyone with an OCL account when subscriptions open, and again before December 1 if it affects you.
What stays free?
- Browsing, searching and reading all public terminology content
- Creating, editing and publishing public terminology content
- Exporting public content
- Public API reads, rate-limited
- Community forum, community calls, GitHub, documentation
- The open-source core of OCL
Public access to terminology content is a public good. It was free before and it stays free. This isn't a promotional tier; it's the point of the project.
What will require a paid plan?
Private repositories; the OCL Mapper, matching and the OCL AI Assistant beyond a free preview; semantic search over your own repositories; the FHIR terminology service beyond a free preview; the OCL MCP server; and higher API rate limits and content limits than the free plan includes. The pricing page shows what each plan includes.
You're paying for tools that go beyond the open commons — not for permission to see or publish public terminology.
What counts as premium functionality?
Premium functionality is what OCL's paid plans add to the free Community plan. If your account was created before November 1, 2026 and you use any of the following, you have until December 1, 2026 to subscribe:
- Private repositories: sources or collections that only you or your organization can see. Personal private repositories are part of Pro, and organization-owned private repositories are part of Team.
- The OCL Mapper, matching and the OCL AI Assistant beyond the free preview. Every account gets a one-time preview, currently 1 Mapper project of up to 25 rows, 100 match operations and 25 OCL AI Assistant calls.
- Semantic search over your own repositories.
- The FHIR terminology service beyond its free preview, including terminology operations such as $validate-code, $translate and $expand, and the OCL MCP server.
These stay free on the Community plan: browsing and searching all public content, including CIEL; creating, editing and publishing public terminology; exporting your own content at any time; the REST API and the OCL CLI, within the Community plan's rate limits; a preview of the FHIR terminology service; and community support. We'll publish each plan's allowances and limits on the pricing page by mid-October, and we may adjust them as we learn how OCL Online is used.
If you use premium functionality and haven't subscribed by December 1, private repositories and Mapper projects beyond the preview become read-only for you. Nothing is deleted without notice, and you can still export them. Before anything private is archived, we'll give you at least 30 days' written notice. Matching, the OCL AI Assistant and the FHIR terminology service go back to the Community preview.
Not sure whether this applies to you? Reply to our email or email us.
How much will it cost?
There are three self-serve plans — Community (free), Pro for individuals, and Team for organizations — plus custom arrangements for ministries, national deployments and anyone needing an SLA, hosted licensed terminologies or custom integration.
Prices are a single global list in USD. They're introductory prices for the first year of paid plans: choose an annual plan to lock in the price for the year. Annual billing is two months free on every plan.
See the pricing page for current prices and what each plan includes.
What happens to my existing content?
Your content stays where it is.
Your sources, collections, concepts and mappings are preserved exactly as they are, and editing public content stays free on the Community plan. If you use premium functionality and haven't subscribed by December 1, 2026, it becomes read-only — you can still see it, link to it, and export it. Subscribe later, even months later, and editing resumes immediately.
The one exception is content a plan doesn't support — private repositories on a plan without private content, for example. There we'll write to you, give you at least 30 days to export it or make it public, and only archive or remove it after that. We'll never remove content because of a plan change without telling you first.
You can export your data at any time, on any plan, including the free one. We will never hold your data hostage. Our Terms of Use set this out in full.
What about my private repositories?
They stay private. If you haven't subscribed by December 1 they become read-only to you — we don't make them public and we don't share them with other users.
If your plan doesn't include private repositories, we'll contact you and give you at least 30 days to export them or make them public before they're archived. We won't publish private content, and we won't remove it for a plan change without notice.
I'm at an organization. How much time will we get?
The same as everyone. If your account was created before November 1 and you use premium functionality, you have until December 1, 2026 to subscribe: more than 60 days from when we published the dates. If you need more time — e.g. if your organization is going through a formal procurement process — please reach out. That conversation is normal, not an exception.
Can I try the OCL Mapper?
Yes. Anyone with an OCL account is welcome to create a project and preview the Mapper — our standard semantic matching algorithm and the OCL AI Assistant — on a limited number of rows, free. That's enough to map a real sample and see whether it does what you need. Beyond that, a paid plan unlocks full use — see pricing.
Open source and self-hosting
Where can I access the source code?
OCL's source code is available on GitHub here: https://github.com/OpenConceptLab
OCL's source code is freely available under the Mozilla Public License v2 with a healthcare disclaimer.
Is OCL still open source?
Yes, and it stays that way. The code is on GitHub under MPL v2, self-hosting remains fully supported, and the tier-enforcement code itself is open too — you can read exactly what is gated and how.
What's changing is the price of the hosted service at app.v3.openconceptlab.org, which we operate, maintain and pay infrastructure bills for. We monetize hosting, support and SLAs. We don't close the source.
How can I host my own instance of the OCL tools?
Implementers have three options when using OCL: (1) cloud-based OCL Online, (2) self-hosting, or (3) a managed deployment. We generally recommend that you start with the cloud-hosted OCL Online and only move to self-hosted if you have an actual project need (e.g. using a terminology service to process a high volume of data exchange transactions). Even then, an implementer may benefit from continuing to manage content in OCL Online and simply push the content to a local terminology service for transactional support.
- Cloud-based OCL Online: One of the main values of OCL is collaborative management of terminology content, where you can take advantage of community-defined content and up-to-date reference terminologies, like LOINC or CIEL, that are maintained by the OCL team. Using OCL Online also alleviates the need to set up your own infrastructure. OCL Online supports all of the same terminology service transactions as a self-host, it is not suited for a high volume transactional support.
- Self-host: Self-hosting is best suited for implementers that require a high volume of data exchange transactions that are hitting the terminology service. The tradeoff is that in addition to managing your own content, you must also maintain the software and all of your reference content (e.g. SNOMED, LOINC, CIEL, etc.), which is an ongoing (not one-time) activity.
- Managed deployment: OCL manages an independent deployment on your behalf, as a service. See hosting options.
Can I self-host for free?
Yes. The subscription applies to the hosted service only. If you'd like deployment help or ongoing support for a self-hosted instance, talk to us.
Still have a question?
Email us — a person reads and answers every message. For quick technical questions, OCL Chat is usually faster.