Can I suggest moving this to the Clinical list? I think it is an important subject ,and rather dear to my own interests but, as Thomas pointed out, we are in danger of submerging Seref's original more technical question.
Any objections? Ian Dr Ian McNicoll office / fax +44(0)141 560 4657 mobile +44 (0)775 209 7859 skype ianmcnicoll ian at mcmi.co.uk Clinical Analyst Ocean Informatics ian.mcnicoll at oceaninformatics.com BCS Primary Health Care Specialist Group www.phcsg.org 2009/4/22 Gerard Freriks <gfrer at luna.nl>: > Dear Seref, > > Ask yourself the question: > How do we, humans, deal with interoperability? > > Do we humans use formally expressed ontologies using OWL. > Do we use rigid formal syntaxes where we use strictly defined formal > terms. > Do wet have to express a measurement in DV-Quantity as Double or > Floating Point with Precision x. > All this is the world of zero's and one's, bits and bytes and IT > industry. > > We humans have a vague knowledge of many concepts in our worlds. > We have a very flexible syntax and many, many terms. We even invent > new ones. > It is a chaotic system based on a limited set of rules with emergent > behavior. > We express what we want to document using documents, chapters, > sections, paragraphs, words and characters. > This is the world of documentation, concepts, humans. > This the magnificent world of language, prose and poetry. > Where on the basis of a limited set of rules we can document everything. > > It is clear that both worlds (IT and Humans) overlap in certain areas. > But mostly the do not overlap. > Do not mix them up and when you do, we get confused and create monsters. > Both worlds have to stay absolutely orthogonal to each other. > > Any interoperability solution where notions, ways of thinking and > expressing, from the IT world with bits and bytes are enforced on > humans, will create problems. > Solutions should start at this human documentation/language level. > > The EHR is about documentation of events/facts/thoughts/ideas for > human consumption primarily. > IT-systems should support this. That is all we need for now. > We can try to model real life using the formal, rigid, technical ways. > And create something that doesn't fit the needs of humans or relates > to this human world. > Or we use IT and models to support humans to document what they feel > they need to document. > Humans are not very precise but language works rather efficiently and > well enough. > > Modeling knowledge in ontologies is an interesting academic exercise. > Modeling the complex real life is an interesting academic exercise. > But... > Let humans use words freely, either as free text of better from a > common controlled flexible resource (dictionary=coding system/ > terminology/classification). > Let humans use words in a syntax (Reference Model) to create freely > all sentences/screens (Templates) they need using agreed documentation > patterns (Archetypes), using tools based on an Archetype Model. > > And that for the moment is good enough at this point in time looking > for the Holy Grail called Semantic Interoperability. > > Gerard > > > On 21, Apr, 2009, at 12:25 , Seref Arikan wrote: > >> Dear members of the list, >> I'd appreciate your opinions and guidance about a particular topic. >> As most of you probably know, the work in the ontology domain has >> been the flagship of semantic interoperability for many projects >> now, and there is a large amount of researchers active in the field. >> I've been involved in use of ontologies for semantic >> interoperability for the first time in 2002, and since then, >> ontologies have become a frequently pronounced solution for a large >> set of problems. >> However, I have a feeling that the nature of this work creates just >> a layer in the multilayer interoperability space. Expressing >> relationships among different entities and doing this in a formal >> way (OWL) is nice. OWL also allows you to do processing, reasoning >> on the defined relationships, but unless I'm missing something, this >> is all about relationships, and concepts. I mean the capabilities of >> OWL seem to be valid in the relationships is defines. >> What about the actual things, data items, entities that OWL links >> together? I've been a proponent of well defined type systems and >> object hieararchies in healthcare interoperability solutions, since >> I've spent years in the software development side of the domain, and >> a huge number of issues arise from the developers interpreting >> losely defined types, or inventing their own types. >> Now pinning down concepts either by using terminologies or >> ontologies is good. It is good to know that two fields on two >> different data structures are pointing to the same concept. This >> however, is the beginning of the process. Pointing at the same thing >> and processing it in the same way are different things. Just because >> we agree that we are pointing to body temperature in two different >> documents does not stop us from processing one of them with a >> double, and the other one with a float. >> There is a great deal of information out there expressed in the form >> of OWL, or other formalisms, but I can't see this covering all >> aspects of interoperability, but (no offense) there is a large crowd >> out there who think they have solved the problem of semantic >> interoperability. Though it may be an undervaluation of the work, >> "mappings" are nice, but they don't ease the rest of the work, where >> mapped items are processed in different domains. >> Are there resources or works that you know of, that try to link type >> systems in openEHR or other formalisms like 13606 or HL7 to these >> semantic expressions? How does a DVQuantity instance and an OWL >> expression play together? >> >> Best Regards >> Seref > > _______________________________________________ > openEHR-technical mailing list > openEHR-technical at openehr.org > http://lists.chime.ucl.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/openehr-technical > >
