The Open Health Unified Representation Standard (OHURS) is an open and vendor-neutral specification intended to address a fundamental interoperability challenge across human, animal, environmental and ecosystem health systems. Although substantial progress has been made through domain-specific standards, information remains structurally fragmented across institutions, disciplines, technologies and administrative boundaries. Observations, resources, interventions, technologies, evidence and outcomes are frequently represented using incompatible structures, making integration, validation, traceability and reuse unnecessarily difficult.
OHURS proposes a common representation framework designed to connect these elements through a shared, machine-readable structure while remaining compatible with existing standards and information systems. The objective is not to replace established models, databases, ontologies or operational platforms. Instead, OHURS provides a semantic and technical layer through which information originating from diverse sources can remain interoperable, traceable and reusable across contexts. The specification focuses on practical implementation and operational utility rather than exhaustive modelling, enabling adoption by research infrastructures, healthcare services, environmental monitoring systems, public administrations, educational institutions and community initiatives alike.
A central design principle of OHURS is provenance. Information is not represented as isolated records but as part of a broader network of relationships linking observations to instruments, sensors, software systems, analytical methods, protocols, standards, organisations and resulting outcomes. This allows users to understand not only what information exists, but how it was generated, processed, validated and applied. Such traceability is essential for reproducibility, implementation science, quality assurance, evidence assessment and accountable decision-making.
Technically, OHURS builds upon established open standards, linked-data principles, FAIR data practices and modern interoperability approaches while prioritising simplicity, portability and independent implementation. Structured JSON and NDJSON representations provide a practical foundation for information exchange ranging from small community projects and educational initiatives to large-scale institutional infrastructures. The specification is designed to remain accessible to developers, researchers, practitioners and public-interest organisations without imposing dependence on proprietary software, commercial platforms or vendor-controlled ecosystems.
The project includes development of the specification itself together with open-source reference implementations, validation tooling, interoperability mappings, demonstration datasets, technical documentation and educational materials. All deliverables are released under permissive free and open-source licences and open-access terms to maximise transparency, reproducibility and long-term sustainability. Governance is conducted openly through public repositories, technical review, community participation and documented decision-making processes.
OHURS ultimately seeks to provide a common language through which observations, resources, technologies, interventions and outcomes can remain connected across domains, supporting more effective research, evidence generation, monitoring, evaluation, implementation and public-interest decision-making within the broader One Health ecosystem.
Public Health Surveillance
An outbreak investigation combines clinical observations, laboratory results, genomic sequences, environmental measurements and intervention records originating from independent systems. OHURS provides a common representation layer allowing these resources to remain connected, traceable and interoperable throughout the investigation lifecycle.
One Health Research
A research consortium studies antimicrobial resistance across human healthcare facilities, livestock production systems and environmental monitoring sites. OHURS enables observations, analytical methods, datasets, software tools and resulting evidence to be represented through a shared structure, facilitating reproducibility and cross-domain analysis.
Implementation Science and Policy
A public administration evaluates a mental health intervention deployed across multiple regions. OHURS links programme activities, contextual factors, outcome indicators, evidence sources and evaluation methods within a single machine-readable framework, supporting transparency, accountability and evidence-informed decision-making.
The initiative is currently under active development. Present work focuses on conceptual modelling, requirements analysis, stakeholder consultation, semantic structures, interoperability pathways, reference architectures and implementation planning.