As openEHR continues to grow, so does the range of voices helping to guide it. We are very pleased therefore to announce that Dr Somayeh Abedian has joined the board of openEHR International CIC as our Individual Representative.
Health systems around the world are increasingly choosing openEHR as the foundation for durable, vendor-neutral clinical data. That growth brings new responsibilities: to the organisations implementing openEHR, to the vendors building on it, and to the individual clinicians, modellers, researchers and engineers whose expertise and goodwill have always been at the heart of our community. A board that reflects all of these perspectives is essential to getting the next chapter right.
“Somayeh brings a rare combination of academic depth and real-world interoperability experience. As openEHR grows, it’s vital that our individual members have a strong voice on the board, and I’m delighted to welcome her.” – Jordi Piera Jiménez, CEO.
Dr Somayeh Abedian, Individual Representative
Somayeh is a health informatics executive with 19 years of experience, specialising in healthcare interoperability standards and health information systems.
Her career brings together technical and management expertise. She holds bachelor’s degrees in computer software engineering and English translation, a master’s in Information Technology Management with a specialisation in advanced information systems, and a PhD in Information Technology Management (Business Intelligence), with doctoral research focused on healthcare interoperability.
Over the years, she has been involved in the design, development and monitoring of eHealth services at various scales. Her interests span health informatics standards, the modelling and implementation of health information systems, monitoring and evaluation, and electronic health records.
Today, Somayeh is an adjunct faculty member in the Master of Health Informatics programme at the University of Toronto’s Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, and a Senior Researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Association in Austria.
Somayeh has been an active member of the openEHR community for many years. As an openEHR Fellow and now Individual Representative, she will help ensure that the perspectives of individual members of the community are heard at board level. Her combination of academic depth, international experience and practical knowledge of interoperability makes her a valuable addition as openEHR expands into new regions and new use cases.
Tomaž Gornik, Chair and Industry Representative
We are also pleased to confirm that Tomaž Gornik continues as Chair of the board, where he also serves as an Industry Representative.
Tomaž is the founder and CEO of Better, whose open digital health platform helps healthcare organisations take control of their data, workflows and applications to improve patient care. With more than 30 years’ experience founding companies and leading teams that build world-class software, he has long championed the idea at the core of openEHR: that healthcare should think about data first and applications second.
In Tomaž’s words, “Separating data from applications prevents vendor lock-in and increases innovation. It enables healthcare organisations to move to an architecture built around a vendor-neutral, consistent, longitudinal patient record that serves as a single source of truth.”
His continued leadership as Chair ensures that the experience of the vendors building on openEHR remains closely connected to the organisation’s direction.
Looking ahead
Together with the rest of the board, Somayeh and Tomaž will help steer openEHR International through a period of growth, balancing the needs of industry, healthcare organisations and the individuals who make up our community.
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