Re: [BIONT-DSE] Inclusion versus exclusion criteria

At 08:06 AM 9/12/2007, Kavitha Srinivas wrote:

>1.  Yes, as Chintan said, in the case where you had explicit
>negations in the data (e.g., the lab data rules out the presence of a
>certain infectious agent), you clearly want to use open world
>reasoning.  However, if someone is not explicitly asserted to be on
>some prescription drug, it is fair to assume that they are not taking
>the drug (closed world assumption).

Actually, it is dangerous to assume anything if a patient is not 
explicitly asserted to be taking any particular drug--omissions on 
drug histories happen all the time...
Likewise, making any generalized statements about when open- and 
closed-world reasoning are appropriate in health care is 
dangerous--one must be very specific about the context and specific 
case to assess whether the assumption is valid.


__

Daniel Rubin, MD, MS
Clinical Asst. Professor, Radiology
Research Scientist, Stanford Medical Informatics
Scientific Director, National Center of Biomedical Ontology
MSOB X-215
Stanford, CA 94305
650-725-5693

Received on Wednesday, 12 September 2007 17:54:30 UTC