RE: Implications and Issues in Converting UML to RDF/OWL When Constructing HL7 RIM Ontology

Hi Dan,

 

I think this is a good start. As others have suggested, we need to drill down
further to understand our requirements and

evaluate the need for representing RIM in OWL.. Some suggestions of deepening
the use case are as follows:

"An RDF system has been put in place to navigate to healthcare resources stored
in many systems including genetic resources, proteomic resources, and healthcare
medical record resources. 

[VK] Clearly the functionality required is the ability to navigate information.

       Also, you want to navigate across a wide variety of resources: genetic,
proteomic, and healthcare
      To begin with, could you give examples of each of these resources,
particularly of specific information items in each of them?

One of the healthcare resources is a CDA document, which itself has a URI.
However, within the CDA document, are detailed resources expressed as HL7 RIM
Acts which also carry URI's. 

[VK] Is there a special requirement related to the CDA document? Is it playing a
specific role?

I would like to navigate from my RDF-based navigation system to a specific kind
of HL7 RIM Act, e.g. a family medical history clinical statement, within a
specific kind of CDA document. "

[VK] How would you like to navigate?
      - via URLs, i.e., browse the document at each stage and physically click
the URL?
      - via search, i.e., give some search query to identify the next
information artifact you want to navigate to?
     - is there an overarching goal for the navigation, e.g., seeking
information on genetic treatments for disease X?
     - any other context of navigation I may have missed?

So, if you want to do it via hard-coded URLs, then there is no need for
converting RIM to anything. Your just need to move all the resources to a web
based infrastructure and hand code
the URLs.

For the other two options:

-       Depending on the sophisticated nature of search (get me all info on
disease X) or sophisticated information seeking goals, there is a clear need to
describe the various resources
using a common ontology. I guess you would need RIM in that context, most
probably you will only need a subset or specialized version of RIM.

If so, could you give us examples of the following:

-       A list of search queries a user would be expected to give in the course
of his navigation?

-       A detail specification of a "navigation flow" across multiple
information artifacts and a list of "goals" to guide the navigation?

I'm sure this use case could be better written with a little time. However, is
this the kind of use case you were looking for?

[VK] Have proposed a set of criteria that could be used to deepen the use case.
Would suggest that we work on specifying the use case in more detail and this
will help
      identify choices for mapping the RIM (and other related ontologies) to
OWL.

Cheers,

---Vipul