Hi
You cannot RESOLVE this issue - it is just another example of how you can view the real world from a quantisillion different perspectives. In theory, all perspectives and all levels of classification are "equal" - it is the needs of the concrete situation that determines which perspectives to consider and how you classify the observations and measurements done according to that/those perspectives.
It's all contextual, just like anybody's list of phone numbers to friends, relatives, and associates. If you have 10 or 20 of them, fine, you don't need more than writing them down on a piece of paper. If you have 1,000, pieces of paper are a major impediment.
A key aspect for me is that the patients where detailed info is most needed are those with long-term problems or in long-term care (hypertensives, disabled, HIV+, etc etc). But long-term care also means a huge amount of "history", and again Idon't think you will find many (over-worked?) doctors willing to wade through 20 or 30 years of (other doctor's) handwriting imagery to find facts pertinent to current problems or treatment regimen. In other words, unless you classify/interpret information along the way it will not be retrivable in practice.
regards calle ********************************************* Calle Hedberg 46D Alma Road, 7700 Rosebank, SOUTH AFRICA Tel/fax (home): +27-21-685-6472; Cell: +27-82-853-5352 *********************************************
----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Ho" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Tim Churches" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "openhealth-list @ minoru-development . com" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 2004 9:03 AM
Subject: Re: information capture, was Re: CPOE time studies.
On Mon, 5 Oct 2004, Tim Churches wrote: ...True. But I would argue that capturing textual or quantitative information as images severely limits its utility.
Tim, You are correct - however, there may be a trade-off between speed and convenience of capture vs. subsequent utility. Furthermore, for free text data, subsequent computability may already be quite low/negligible - no matter typed-in via keyboard or stored as image.
...
Best regards,
Andrew --- Andrew P. Ho, M.D. OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes www.TxOutcome.Org
