RE: An argument for bridging information models and ontologies at the syntactic level

 

	Ogbuji, Chimezie wrote:
	

		Dan,
		
		I've very familiar with the SOAP model.  The primary motivation
for my questions about assessment had more to do with distinguishing an action
from data that is derived from it.  This speaks directly to the problem of the
'anti-pattern' where ontologies for medical records are built *directly* from
models that were designed with data-level concerns in mind and thus semantically
inconsistent (so called "information models").
		
		The sense of assessment as used in this paper suggests that an
assessment is data (and thus appropriate to consider a diagnosis), but consider
that there are other senses of the word and one in particular is "the act of
judging or assessing a person or situation or event".  In the latter case, an
assessment refers to the act.  I was simply trying to tease out which of these
Tom had in mind.

	<danR> It is true that in traditional lab department systems, the 'data
from the assessment' was modeled separately from the 'assessment action.'  This
is not exactly "wrong." However, it was noted that one cannot deliver a "numeric
result" without restating the action that generated the result, e.g. serum WBC
is the action and serum WBC of 10,000 WBcells/ml is the result. In physical
sciences, it is considered good practice to always include the methodology of
the action when describing the data. Accordingly, it is best practice in the
science of healthcare to also report on the nature of the action itself at the
same time as reporting on the data derived from the action. 
	 
	[VK] It may be the case that one can model key properties that can
enable the accurate assessment of the action.
	For instance, one could model things like the property being assessed,
who is doing the assessment, the qualifiers of the assessment, etc. 
	The CEM approack followed by IHC seems to adopt this strategy. From what
I can see, there doesn't appear a need to model all the aspects of an action.
	 
	On the other hand, if there is indeed a need for more contextual
information related to the action of performing the assessment, it is probably a
good idea to
	model these two things separately and then link them via approporiate
relationships modeling the context, but this likely to happen in an application
specific manner.
	 
	Cheers,
	 
	---Vipul


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