RE: [TMO] patient record normalization


> But then anyone merging two TMO documents with different units has the
> normalization burden. If we pick a unit and annotate the predicates,
> then the folks who would have to do the work of merging with non-TMO
> documents (who would have to introduce some rules/canonicalization
> pipeline anyways) have the OWL hooks to automate that merging.

Again, if we are considering TMO, then we can impose a restriction to specify the unit - we can also make this clear in documentation relating to the measurements with units.

> > Also, having domain-independent predicates makes it easier to render
> a view
> > of the data (for human consumption) that includes visual cues
> regarding the
> > units of measures associated with values directly from the data since
> such
> > tools will always expect the same set of terms to capture a value and
> its
> > unit of measurement.
> 
> If you've bought the argument for early normalization, isn't it
> needlessly dangerous to offer the freedom to express BP in mmHg in an
> ontology that's required to have BP in MPa? It does put more burden on
> the use of generic data browsers (they'd have to read the OWL in order
> to present the user with units), but I think that use case is small
> compared to the cost of data consumption.

I don't think we should tailor our data model to generic data browsers - they are far too simple for the complex knowledge that we have to represent. 

m.

Received on Friday, 10 September 2010 20:31:28 UTC