2023 OCL Community Roadmap

What is the OCL Community Roadmap?

The Open Concept Lab (OCL) Community Roadmap, created for and by our community, lays out a set of goals for OCL’s tools, services, and the community at large, and follows this general approach:

  • Goals are aspirational– not commitments– representing community priorities and requirements, and are only achieved through community contributions and funded projects.
  • Community members are encouraged to collaborate on and champion goals – Resource gaps are noted alongside each goal below. Contact a community member or email info@openconceptlab.org to get involved and be listed as a stakeholder for one of the goals.
  • Open roadmap development process – Input is solicited through community meetings and a draft is published publicly for final review and prioritization.
  • Timelines and priorities depend on resources – Community contributions, volunteers, and client needs determine when and whether goals are achieved.
  • Roadmap is a living document – Our goals evolve with the community, so the roadmap will be updated throughout the year to reflect progress and contributing organizations. Comments are welcome at any time!

 

OCL Community Roadmap Framework

For 2023, we introduced a new framework for our roadmap to make it easier to understand and to track progress against. The new framework consists of these categories:

  • Cross-cutting Goals & Community Initiatives – The goals from tools, services, and community come together to help the entire OCL community achieve greater impact
  • Tools – OCL’s open source tools and related infrastructure
  • Services – The set of centrally provided services, including OCL Online
  • Community – All activities and resources to support the OCL community

 

2023 OCL Roadmap Summary

Tools

Category Goal Driving Use Case
OCL FHIR Corebeta
Status: In progress
 Launch the new OCL FHIR Corebeta and preload HL7 FHIR terminology content** in OCL Online.
*OCL FHIR Core is based on the FHIR R4 specification **See “Definitions JSON” under Resource Collections at https://terminology.hl7.org/downloads.html		 Use OCL to author or adapt FHIR-based computable guidelines (i.e. SMART Guidelines, PEPFAR DASH) into your information architecture.
Multi-server Browsing & Management

Status: Seeking
 Enable the TermBrowser to interact with terminology resources from multiple OCL and FHIR terminology servers simultaneously, including the WHO ICD-11 FHIR service. Support emerging federated models with multiple publication services (e.g. WHO ICD-11 FHIR service, SMART Guidelines, OCL Online).
TermBrowser Design System

Status: In progress Seeking
 Introduce a design system that provides design guidance to code contributors and implement it across OCL’s tools. Create a more consistent and intuitive user experience across OCL’s online presence and lower barriers to community code contributions.
Dynamic Collection Workflows

Status: Seeking
 Implement workflows that leverage OCL’s new dynamic collection features in the TermBrowser, including advanced expansions, smarter versioning, repository comparisons, and more. Make it easier to adapt terminologies to local requirements and to maintain content as best practices and standards evolve over time.
Collaboration Workflows & Notifications

Status: Not started Seeking
 Implement collaborative features, including concept proposals, translation suggestions, review and approval workflow, and automated change notifications, to facilitate community feedback, reuse of high quality terminology content, and peer learning. Allow users to interface with terminology publishers to suggest changes to the content, or to open up content for feedback from terminology experts.
OpenMRS Dictionary Management

Status: In progress Seeking
 Implement remaining features that OpenMRS Dictionary Managers need to build and subscribe to concept dictionaries directly inside the OCL TermBrowser, such as sorted mappings, concept cloning, concept customizations, and linked sources. Prepare OCL for production-level subscription and management of source-based OpenMRS concept dictionaries.
Internationalization

Status: In progress Seeking
 Add support for multiple user interface translations in the TermBrowser and expand multilingual support for managed terminologies (e.g. country codes, custom attributes). Improve accessibility of the OCL Toolkit for users globally with better internationalization.
Cybersecurity & Compliance

Status: Seeking
 Rollout single-sign on, advanced permissions, and cybersecurity controls to support more deployment configurations and compliance with WHO/USG requirements. OCL capable of complying with strict cybersecurity requirements of government/enterprise deployments, particularly for WHO to deploy OCL in their Azure and for PEPFAR to use OCL Online in production.

Services

Category Goal Driving Use Case
OCL Online

Status: In progress
 Publish and maintain key reference terminologies, including HL7 FHIR Terminologies, PEPFAR MER indicators, CIEL, SNOMED GPS, and others. Continue to improve OCL Online infrastructure, including performance, analytics, and system administration. Any LMIC implementer of OpenMRS, SMART Guidelines, etc. can collect and reuse pre-loaded standard, emerging, and custom terminology content from a one-stop shop for common emerging data exchange use cases.
User Support

Status: Not started
 Establish processes, tools and documentation to provide user support, report bugs, etc. Any user of OCL can identify and participate in processes to report issues, ask for technical support, and stay up to date with fixes or enhancements.
Client Technical Assistance

Status: In progress
 Setup partnership-based technical assistance models to augment resources for OCL implementers. OCL implementers can get the technical assistance that they need with terminology implementation and adoption.

Community

Category Goal Impact
Community / User Engagement

Status: In progress Seeking
 Create forums, tools, and online spaces for community events, community-led discussions and peer learning. Foster a culture that promotes: 1) The ability for users to identify themselves as community members and co-owners of OCL; and 2) Easily accessible peer-learning for OCL features, strategies, and best practices.
Communications

Status: In progress Seeking
 Optimize the communication strategy to maintain regular communications and outreach by promoting the OCL identity, value, community voices, and growth. OCL community is aware of new features, resources and impact stories and users feel invested in and contribute to the progress, tools, and contributions of OCL.
Learning Materials

Status: Seeking
 Coordinate the development and revision of materials to support the use, management, deployment, and development of the OCL Toolkit. Users have the resources they need to effectively use OCL.
Community Governance

Status: In progress
 Create the first OCL Strategic Roadmap to guide organizational and business development and community governance. OCL community has transparent governance with well-defined opportunities to influence the community’s evolution.

 

2023 OCL Community Roadmap Details

 

Tools

OCL FHIR Corebeta

Goal Launch the new OCL FHIR Corebeta and preload HL7 FHIR terminology content in OCL Online.
* OCL FHIR Core is based on the FHIR R4 specification ** See “Definitions JSON” under Resource Collections at https://terminology.hl7.org/downloads.html
Driving Use Case Use OCL to author or adapt FHIR-based computable guidelines (i.e. SMART Guidelines, PEPFAR DASH) into your information architecture.
Status In progress
Champion Rafal
Stakeholders tbd
Resources Needed FHIR SME, Tester, FHIR Developer

 

Description Target Completion Date Resourcing
Beta launch for OCL FHIR Core beta (includes retiring old FHIR service) 2023Q1 Funded
Reproducible battery of tests to load and validate HL7 terminologies and WHO SMART Guideline content 2023Q2 Funding Expected
Support for FHIR Implementation Guide builds (initial use case is to support builds off the WHO ANC FHIR Implementation Guide) 2023Q3 Funding Expected
WHO SMART Guideline full publication support 2023Q3 Funding Expected
FHIR/SVCM compliance testing TBD Partially funded
FHIR Compatibility statement TBD Partially funded
Official launch for OCL FHIR Core v1 TBD Partially funded
Global Canonical URL Registry TBD Not Resourced
HL7 Connectathon TBD Not Resourced

 

Multi-server Browsing and Management

Goal Enable the TermBrowser to interact with terminology resources from multiple OCL and FHIR terminology servers simultaneously, including the WHO ICD-11 FHIR service.
Driving Use Case Support emerging federated models with multiple publication services (e.g. WHO ICD-11 FHIR service, SMART Guidelines, OCL Online).
Status Seeking
Champion tbd
Stakeholders tbd
Resources Needed React developer

 

Description Target Completion Date Resourcing
TermBrowser Connectors n/a
  • WHO ICD-11 FHIR Connector (Requirements, Development
 Funding Expected
  • Overhaul of SVCM & OCL-FHIR Connector
 Funding Expected
  • Abstract TermBrowser connector framework
 Not Resourced
Importable repository exports Funding Expected
Multi-server resource comparisons (e.g. between two OCL servers or an OCL and FHIR terminology server) Partially Resourced
Cross-server mappings (e.g. create a mapping on one OCL server that references concepts hosted on another connected server) Partially Resourced
Cross-server value sets and references (e.g. build a value set on one OCL using concepts published on another connected server) Partially Resourced
“Smart” Bulk Import/Export and Content syndication n/a
  • Administrative capability to move content between servers
 Not Resourced
  • Improved CSV bulk import format for expansions, collection references, etc.
 Not Resourced
  • New task manager features and UI, incl. refactoring bulk import queue management
 Not Resourced

 

TermBrowser Design System

Goal Introduce a design system that provides design guidance to code contributors and implement it across OCL’s tools.
Driving Use Case Create a more consistent and intuitive user experience across OCL’s online presence and lower barriers to community code contributions.
Status In progress Seeking
Champion Paul Adams
Stakeholders Joe
Resources Needed UX expertise, UI testers, Search optimization expertise, FHIR SME

 

Description Target Completion Date Resourcing
Information architecture, templates, design system 2023Q1 Funded
Update OCL visual identity (logo, icons, colors, fonts) 2023Q1 Funded
Concept and Mapping forms and details pages 2023Q2 Not Resourced
Search optimization 2023Q2 Not Resourced
Operations panel improvements (and public release) 2023Q2 Not Resourced
Improve and harmonize download/exports across OCL (incl. Fix CSV exports across TermBrowser) Not Resourced

 

Dynamic Collection Workflows

Goal Implement workflows that leverage OCL’s new dynamic collection features in the TermBrowser, including advanced expansions, smarter versioning, repository comparisons, and more.
Driving Use Case Make it easier to adapt terminologies to local requirements and to maintain content as best practices and standards evolve over time.
Status Seeking
Champion tbd
Stakeholders tbd
Resources Needed OCL Collection Users, OpenMRS Dictionary managers, UI/UX testers

 

Description Target Completion Date Resourcing
Collection Management n/a
  • Associations, Cascade and Cloning UI components
 Not Resourced
  • Overhaul Add references to collection (incl. Bulk add a list of concept IDs to a collection)
 Not Resourced
  • Collection, expansions, references workflow redesign
 Not Resourced
  • Identification of resources updated at their source
 Not Resourced
Version management n/a
  • Diffs + checksums (for resources and repositories)
 Not Resourced
  • Defaulting to latest repo versions (instead of HEAD)
 Not Resourced

 

Collaboration Workflows and Notifications

Goal Implement collaborative features, including concept proposals, translation suggestions, review and approval workflow, and automated change notifications, to facilitate community feedback, reuse of high quality terminology content, and peer learning.
Driving Use Case Allow users to interface with terminology publishers to suggest changes to the content, or to open up content for feedback from terminology experts.
Status Not Started Seeking
Champions Andy, Joe
Stakeholders TBD
Resources Needed Terminology subscribers, Dictionary management teams, Terminology publishers

 

Description Target Completion Date Resourcing
Automated notification of new releases or changed content Not Resourced
User feedback/suggestions (e.g. new translation) and concept/mapping proposals Not Resourced
Audited authoring review and approval Not Resourced
“Walled garden”, promoting relevant user content Not Resourced

 

OpenMRS Dictionary Management

Goal Implement remaining features that OpenMRS Dictionary Managers need to build and subscribe to concept dictionaries directly inside the OCL TermBrowser, such as sorted mappings, concept cloning, concept customizations, and linked sources.
Driving Use Case Prepare OCL for production-level subscription and management of source-based OpenMRS concept dictionaries.
Status In progress Seeking
Champion Suruchi
Stakeholders tbd
Resources Needed CIEL implementers, Dictionary Managers

 

Description Target Completion Date Resourcing
Arrangement of Mappings in Sources Funded
Resource Cloning Funded
Concept/Mapping Customization Not Resourced
Linked Sources i.e. Improved Source/Collection Interaction: n/a
  • Quick-add Mappings
 Not Resourced
  • Suggested Sources/Collections
 Not Resourced
  • Create new concept in context of a collection
 Not Resourced
OpenMRS Subscription Module Workflow (i.e. OCL Content Import into OpenMRS) Not Resourced
Updates OpenMRS Validation Schema  Not Resourced
Concept Templates for OpenMRS Use Cases (e.g. numeric concepts with custom attributes for numeric ranges) Not Resourced

 

Internationalization

Goal Add support for multiple user interface translations in the TermBrowser and expand multilingual support for managed terminologies (e.g. country codes, custom attributes).
Driving Use Case Improve accessibility of the OCL Toolkit for users globally with better internationalization.
Status In progress Seeking
Champion Sunny
Stakeholders tbd
Resources Needed Python/React developer, Translators

 

Description Target Completion Date Resourcing
Multilingual TermBrowser UI Funding Expected
Right-to-left language support in the UI (i.e. Arabic) Funding Expected
Locales round 2 (improved support for country codes) Not Resourced
Multilingual custom attributes Not Resourced

 

Cybersecurity and Compliance

Goal Rollout single-sign on, advanced permissions, and cybersecurity controls to support more deployment configurations and compliance with WHO/USG requirements.
Driving Use Case OCL capable of complying with strict cybersecurity requirements of government/enterprise deployments, particularly for WHO to deploy OCL in their Azure and for PEPFAR to use OCL Online in production.
Status Seeking
Champion tbd
Stakeholders tbd
Resources Needed Cybersecurity SME

 

Description Target Completion Date Resourcing
Single Sign On (SSO) n/a
  • Rollout SSO using KeyCloak across OCL Online environments
 Funding Expected
  • Support integration with Azure Active Directory (AzureAD)
 Funding Expected
Implement cybersecurity controls n/a
  • USG/FISMA cybersecurity controls
 Funded
  • WHO cybersecurity controls
 Funding Expected
Advanced role-based permissions Funding Expected
Support for Azure deployment Funding Expected
Enhanced support for self-hosting (e.g. documentation, versioning, standard OCL images) Funding Expected

 

Services

OCL Online

Goal Publish and maintain key reference terminologies, including HL7 FHIR Terminologies, PEPFAR MER indicators, CIEL, SNOMED GPS, and others. Continue to improve OCL Online infrastructure, including performance, analytics, and system administration.
Driving Use Case Any LMIC implementer of OpenMRS, SMART Guidelines, etc. can collect and reuse pre-loaded standard, emerging, and custom terminology content from a one-stop shop for common emerging data exchange use cases.
Status In progress
Champion Jon
Stakeholders Global Connect, Regenstrief
Resources Needed Legal counsel (licensing), Terminology modeler, ETL expertise, Senior architect, Senior developer

 

Description Target Completion Date Resourcing
Reference terminology publication and maintenance:
  • HL7 terminologies
 Funding Expected
  • Major terminologies: SNOMED-CT, ICD-10-CM, RxNorm
 Not Resourced
  • Others: ISCO, World Development Indicators, etc. as identified by community
 Not Resourced
Content support for Emerging Standards: n/a
  • WHO SMART Guidelines
 Funding Expected
  • WHO Digital Health Interventions classification (DHI)
 Funding Expected
  • PEPFAR Monitoring, Evaluation and Results (MER) Indicators
 Funded
  • CIEL maintenance releases
 Not Resourced
  • Others as identified by community
 TBD
Performance improvements, e.g.:

  • 1-second global concept/mapping search
  • Database level caching, esp of lookup tables and major reference vocabularies
 Not Resourced
OCL Online Infrastructure:

  • E-mail service integration (i.e. opt-in/out, automated notifications)
  • Speed up automated tests
  • Automated performance/load tests
  • Clustering for Redis/ES
 Not Resourced
OCL Online Monitoring and Documentation:

  • Maintenance page
  • Routine failover testing document/scenarios
  • Separate health check from API
  • Analytics reports
 Not Resourced

 

User Support

Goal Establish processes, tools and documentation to provide user support, report bugs, etc.
Driving Use Case Any user of OCL can identify and participate in processes to report issues, ask for technical support, and stay up to date with fixes or enhancements.
Status Not Started
Champion Joe
Stakeholders tbd
Resources Needed Help Desk Expertise, Project Management, and Governance Support

 

Description Target Completion Date Resourcing
Help Desk Processes and Documentation 2023Q4 Funding Expected

 

Client Technical Assistance

Goal Setup partnership-based technical assistance models to augment resources for OCL implementers.
Driving Use Case OCL implementers can get the technical assistance that they need with terminology implementation and adoption.
Status In progress
Stakeholders Global Connect, Regenstrief
Resources Needed Business analysis, Implementers of SMART guidelines content, Terminology implementation/governance SME

 

Description Target Completion Date Resourcing
World Health Organization (WHO): n/a
  • WHO Azure deployment
 Funding Expected
  • WHO SMART Guideline adaptation workflow
 Funding Expected
U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR): n/a
  • Data Aggregation Services for Health (DASH) support
 Funded
  • Ministry of Health (MOH) Alignment support, such as automated tests for IMAP import script
 Funded
  • Monitoring, Evaluation, and Results (MER) support, such as Metadata Sharing Platform (MSP)
 Funded
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Technical Assistance Platform (TAP): n/a
  • Use case development and prioritization
 Funding Expected
  • Workshops for National Health Data Dictionary (NHDD) development or other needs
 Funding Expected

 

Community

Community / User Engagement

Goal Create forums, tools, and online spaces for community events, community-led discussions and peer learning.
Impact Foster a culture that promotes: 1) The ability for users to identify themselves as community members and co-owners of OCL; and 2) Easily accessible peer-learning for OCL features, strategies, and best practices.
Status In progress Seeking
Champion Kasey
Stakeholders tbd
Resources Needed Content writers, Business analyst

 

Description Target Completion Date Resourcing
OCL Community Initiatives n/a
  • Conclude “Year of the User” (e.g. blog post, documentation, etc.)
 Partially Funded
  • Launch Smart Dictionary initiative
 Partially Funded
OCL User personas & profiles Partially Funded
OCL Team workshops: Host at least 4 team workshops during 2023 Partially Funded
Community Outreach and Support TBD
Implement OCL Community Discussion Forum (i.e. discourse?) to discuss feature requests and other community needs Not Resourced
Introduce release cycles Not Resourced
Establish and document a clear feature prioritization process and how to participate Not Resourced

 

Communications

Goal Optimize the communication strategy to maintain regular communications and outreach by promoting the OCL identity, value, community voices, and growth.
Impact OCL community is aware of new features, resources and impact stories and users feel invested in and contribute to the progress, tools, and contributions of OCL.
Status In progress Seeking
Champion Kasey
Stakeholders Regenstrief
Resources Needed Content writers (e.g. blog posts, newsletter)

 

Description Target Completion Date Resourcing
Engaging community to help develop/maintain learning materials, blogs, etc Not Resourced

 

Learning Materials

Goal Coordinate the development and revision of materials to support the use, management, deployment, and development of the OCL Toolkit.
Impact Users have the resources they need to effectively use OCL.
Status Seeking
Champion Joe
Stakeholders tbd
Resources Needed tbd

 

Description Target Completion Date Resourcing
Refine Terminology Maturity Model Assessment tool with community input Partially Resourced
Expand OCL technical documentation Not Resourced
Revise OCL FAQ Not Resourced
Create Youtube educational videos Not Resourced

 

Community Governance

Goal Create the first OCL Strategic Roadmap to guide organizational and business development and community governance.
Impact OCL community has transparent governance with well-defined opportunities to influence the community’s evolution.
Status In progress
Champion Jon
Stakeholders Global Connect, Regenstrief
Resources Needed TBD

 

Description Target Completion Date Resourcing
Adopt OCL Community Governance Strategy 2023Q2 Funded

 

Parking Lot

Items that haven’t yet been incorporated into the roadmap are listed below. None of these are currently funded and priorities are TBD. Community members are welcome to suggest changes/additions to this list so that others can chime in. You can always email info@openconceptlab.org if you are unsure of how to contribute to this list.

  • Fuzzy matching
  • Lookup tables pulled from sources in OCL
  • Squash duplicate resource versions using checksums
  • Possible additions to OpenMRS Dictionary Management (from Migrating PIH to OCL):
    • Editing concept numerics (managing ranges and units)
    • Datatype-specific behavior – e.g., adding answers (and not set members) to questions, adding set members (and not answers) to sets
    • Changing external ID (OpenMRS UUID) when breaking changes made to cloned concept (e.g., datatype changed on concept copied from CIEL)
    • Including sources in export
    • Better handling of long running tasks in UI