RE: [TMO] patient record normalization

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eric Prud'hommeaux [mailto:ericw3c@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Eric
> Prud'hommeaux
> Sent: Friday, September 10, 2010 6:41 PM
> To: Michel_Dumontier
> Cc: Chimezie Ogbuji; public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org
> Subject: RE: [TMO] patient record normalization
> 
> * Michel_Dumontier <Michel_Dumontier@carleton.ca> [2010-09-10 16:30-
> 0400]
> >
> > > 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.
> 
> My thesis is that including such apparent flexibility does a bit more
> harm than good; that the potential good is almost exclusively in the
> use of tools which can make generic use of standard value predicates
> (rdf:value, muo:numericalValue) e.g. data browsers. The harm is that
> you are advertising a flexibility that you don't intend to honor; the
> freedom of units. If we impose the reasoning constraint not on the
> authoring pipeline, but instead on those who would make use of the
> generic predicates, we reduce the likelihood of non-normalized data.

It's not a restriction on the predicates - it's a restriction on instances of a certain class - like that of blood pressure measurements. Checking consistency would tell you whether your data conforms to the specification described by the ontology document.

m.

> 
> 
> > > > 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.
> 
> --
> -ericP

Received on Friday, 10 September 2010 22:43:21 UTC