Jim I believe that archetypes will be what decision support and the EHR share - these models enable the sort of generic functionality that you are looking for. The question then is - what knowledge should be in the archetype, and what should be in a knowledge base.
Normal values is very problematic to put into the archetype for the following reasons: 1. They vary with age and other person characteristics 2. They vary with national attitudes and values 3. They vary with units and measuring devices So, my answer is that you are slipping into the realm of decision support, but that the sort of values you would like to get at in the EHR should be expressed as archetypes (and paths). Cheers, Sam > I'm trying to represent the structure of "normal" values of fields in > archetypes. I can see that there is of course some provision for a set of > allowed values, a default value and (in quantities) min and max. > I want to go > further (because the information could be very useful in the user > interface and > to integrate with decision support). > > For instance, I'd like to design fairly specific chronic disease > management > archetypes. Without worrying whether it's clinically > particularly worthy, take > as a convenient example the hypertension in diabetes algorithms at > http://www.tdh.state.tx.us/diabetes/algorithms/PDFfiles/HYPER.PDF. > > My PhD student, Sistine Barretto, has made a map of the relationship of > concepts from that guideline (see > http://winston.unisa.edu.au/demo/Share/Ontology.doc - and the > goal here is not > to get too picky about the use of the term "ontology" either). > > From this analysis it falls out (unsurprisingly) that there are a > set of drugs > (in particular, some drug types as well as a set of generics > organised into > types) that are in the scope of compliance with the guideline. > There are also > some relevant comorbidities and various other concepts (observations and > actions). > > How can I (should I?) represent the set of likely (in scope) > drugs such that, > for example, a user interface could put them as options in a menu? > Furthermore, how can I relate the comorbidities and other > indications for the > drugs to the values for a drug name field in a specialised medication > archetype? > > Admittedly, I'm slipping into the realm of decision support, but > I think it > really is simply the structure of the domain of normal values in > this specific > application. I'd like to use archetypes to represent this, just > as a I might > use them to represent the min and max of a given quantity. Is > the capability > all there already? If not, what's missing? > > Cheers, > Jim Warren > > Assoc. Prof. Jim Warren > Director, Health Informatics Laboratory > Advanced Computing Research Centre > University of South Australia > - > If you have any questions about using this list, > please send a message to d.lloyd at openehr.org - If you have any questions about using this list, please send a message to d.lloyd at openehr.org
