Because health information exchange functional requirements vary among countries and evolve over time, we recognize that existing standards and interoperability specifications may not fully support a country's HIE needs. Consequently, OpenHIE seeks an architecture that supports -- does not on necessarily constrain -- effective implementation of country-driven workflows that extend beyond current interoperability specifications. To the extent possible, we anticipate that such workflow extensions would be incorporated into future consensus-based standardized interoperability specifications. (It has alternatively been suggested we call this principle "user driven". We seek to make architectural decisions based on implementations expressed needs and choose standards that best support the HIE user's needs.)