On Fri, Mar 09, 2007 at 10:22:12AM -0000, Ian McNicoll wrote: > This did make me wonder if it is always appropriate to create a detailed > archetype for this kind of biomedical data, or should it perhaps simply be > stored/referenced as a blob or link. In GNUmed we draw the distinction like this:
If the detailed data can be made sense of by another application with much ado it make sense (in principle) to "create a detailed archetype". If it only really makes sense to the originating application (the ECG software of the company in this case) it doesn't make much sense to go beyond storing it as a blob and handing it out to the original application on demand. Now, of course, *any* data can be made sense of given appropriate specs. Also, that's the whole purpose of archetypes - to make data self-descriptive and self-consistent. And in an ideal world one would want to map the original data into a perfect ECG archetype and map it back into whatever interpreter of such information is the target. But one also sometimes needs to walk the path of pragmatism. OTOH it may be useful to have a detailed ECG archetype to encourage direct use of it in *future* applications. Karsten -- GPG key ID E4071346 @ wwwkeys.pgp.net E167 67FD A291 2BEA 73BD 4537 78B9 A9F9 E407 1346 _______________________________________________ openEHR-technical mailing list openEHR-technical at openehr.org http://www.chime.ucl.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/openehr-technical
