Language is a funny thing. Sometimes a concept that is used is very precise. (a specific date, a specific object, e.g. a particular chair) Sometimes the concept is vague. (some time, some date, any object with the name chair) Sometimes it is possible to define exactly what we mean. But what is a perfect definition of a chair, so a person not having seen any in his life understands it?
In Informatics many tend to think that everything can be defined precisely. Reality is, more often than not, it can't . The problem is how to handle these imprecise concepts faithfully. By having an attribute (like HL7) indicating this? Gerard Ps: Hi Paul. Is NHS Scotland interested to take part in EN 13606 work with CEN? On 2002-06-08 03:57, "Thomas Beale" <thomas at deepthought.com.au> wrote: > > Our current solution to this situation, as I mentioned in another post > was to add the following routines to the PARTIAL_DATE type: > probable_date: DATE > possible_dates:INTERVAL<DATE> > > If the user GUI was then constructed so that a blank date, and a blank > month were allowed, the software behind would create a PARTIAL_DATE > object. These functions would provide sensible values for statistical > computation (i.e. 15th of the month if date unknown, 1st/June if date > and month unknown). The possible_dates function provides the outer > limits of the possible values of the date, which can be used for query > matching. I am not sure of how much skew this introduces, but it has to > be better than having falsely accuracte dates, or else no structured > date at all. > > Paul, what do you think of this approach? > > - thomas beale > > > > > - > If you have any questions about using this list, > please send a message to d.lloyd at openehr.org -- <private> -- Gerard Freriks, arts Huigsloterdijk 378 2158 LR Buitenkaag The Netherlands +31 252 544896 +31 654 792800 - If you have any questions about using this list, please send a message to d.lloyd at openehr.org
