I tried it and while it works in one rule, the Designer gives me errors in another one.
So I found a simpler way for measuring the time between to events:
var long last_change = now.millis
rule "duration"
when
Item item_which_duration_you_want_to_measure changed
then
//duration as Number in minutes
var Number min = ((now.millis - last_change) / 60000)
ts_state_change = now.millis
end