Re: An argument for bridging information models and ontologies at the syntactic level

On Apr 8, 2008, at 6:50 PM, Kashyap, Vipul wrote:

> Fundamentally, the only interpretation that works is to regard codes  
> as being "meta" to the ontology.  I.e. the individuals in the  
> ontology are things in the conceptualisation of the world - cases of  
> diabetes, people, livers, etc. - individual codes represent classes  
> in the ontology.
> [VK] Agree. Codes represent classes in some ontology or information  
> model.

IMHO, codes don't represent classes in some information model. An  
information model has classes like Observation, whose instances are  
clinical statements made by some entity (person or machine). I think  
information model is "meta" in the sense that its instances are  
statements  (The observation that "John has diabetes") about something  
that happens in the real world (the person named John has an instance  
of Diabetes).  In BFO term, the observation is an instance of  
information-content-entity, as opposed to an assertion about the John  
instance of Person and an instance of Diabetes.

>
>  The entire information structure - HL7 or Archetypes  - in fact, is  
> at a meta-level.
> [VK] Agree with this. In particular, the HL7/RIM has a very  
> confusing construction. It could be viewed as a meta-model but then  
> it also has fields to store patient data,
> For e.g., one may view a class of lab values, say HbA1c as an  
> instance of the RIM Observation class (making it a meta-class),  
> however, the RIM Observation class also
> has the value field for the value of those labs and is in some sense  
> a multi-layered representation, which is probably why it is so  
> confusing.

I don't understand how a class of HbA1c can be an instance of the RIM  
Observation class.  I don't see how the Observation class having the  
value field is the issue.

Samson