UNITS
There are a lot of units out there - it has been our idea to build a
constraint model on units based on the property being measured. A good
example is frequency can be '/{time unit}' (e.g. /min, /hr, /s) or 'Hz'. It
is hoped that we can translate from one to the other as much as possible on
this basis.
It has come to my attention just how many units are out there and that some
units are not translatable to another unit even when the property is the
same without further information. The best known example is gm percent -
which is the same as gm/100ml or gm/dl. This is a concentration but it is
not possible to know the amount of substance (moles) without knowing the
molecular weight of the substance. This means we will have to have units
available in a property that are not translatable. We could separate these
to MASS CONCENTRATION and CONCENTRATION as some have done - but I think
clinicians will want to choose from as small as list as possible.
We need some work done in this area and there are a number of documents
available to get this as tidy as we can.
Cheers, Sam
____________________________________________
Dr Sam Heard
Ocean Informatics, openEHR
Co-Chair, EHR-SIG, HL7
Chair EHR IT-14-9-2, Standards Australia
Hon. Senior Research Fellow, UCL, London
105 Rapid Creek Rd
Rapid Creek NT 0810
Ph: +61 417 838 808
sam.heard at bigpond.com
www.openEHR.org
www.HL7.org
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