RE: EVS NCI example in RDF

Eric,
as I understand it, your example is of a an instance of a "Subject record incorporating observations". While I would like to see a more open ended model of instances of "Observations on Subjects described by Properties".  

And I have problems just looking at an example of an instance as I starts thinking in parallel on the underlying namespaces and the potential RDF Schemas / OWL for specifying the different types of entities we want to instantiate. (Maybe that is just causing me problems, but ... ;-) 

Here some examples of such parallel thoughts on instance and type level triggered from Eric's example:

- Instance of Subjects should have URI:s
As you propose: <nci:Subject  rdf:id="S83221"> 

- Instances of Observations also needs URI:s

- In what namespace will the classes Subjects and Observations be defined?
 
You propose http://nci.nih.gov/cadsr/vocabulary for the Subjects class. While I would like to have an encoding in RDF Schema or OWL that describes the basic types of entities we refer in the domain of clinical trials. E.g. to relate Subjects (in Clinical Studies) as s subclass of individuals that could be either subclasses as patients or healthy volunteers and how Observations as a superclass is related to Subjects.  

- The observation of Sex 
(i.e. the observation of the physical difference between male and female) would be an instance of a type of observation described in a basic ontology of observations of demographics as subclasses of the superclass Observations. And the value 'Female' would be a property that is taken from a CDISC controlled vocabulary published through NCI caDSR.
 
You propose Sex to be a attribute of Subject. That is in my mind a second step and depending on the types of studies and projects. Some of the observations on a subject are considered to be fixed characteristics of the subjects. Sex and Race are the obvious examples, while in others are much more project and study specific such as smoking habits or eye colour.

- The observation of Diastolic Blood Pressure
would be an instance of a type of observation described in a basic ontology of observations of vitals signs (for example http://www.cdisc.org/typeobservations/vitalsigns) as subclasses of the superclass Observation. And the value '98' is a property describing the observation. The position of the patient is another property describing the observation using a CDISC controlled vocabulary published through NCI caDSR.   


Regards
Kerstin

Received on Thursday, 14 December 2006 16:22:54 UTC