Re: An Universal Exchange Language

Jim wrote:
"Like it or not, they were probably thinking of HL7 and ISO 21090. We would need to show how semweb solutions are a better solution, or how it is tied too much to healthcare, leaving out life sciences, population science, chemistry, etc. We don't yet have *a* solution for this, we have several. :-) "

Besides the fact that HL7 et al. are already better established in the current healthcare IT infrastructure than RDF/OWL, it does not seem too hard to come up with reasonable arguments in favour of RDF/OWL. I also read other seemingly RDF-friendly pieces of text in that document:

"As mentioned, ONC's CDA is a foundational step in the right direction. However, the thrust of CDA seems 
largely that it be an extensible wrapper that can hold a variety of structured reports or documents, each 
with vocabulary ­controlled metadata. While this shares many features with the universal exchange 
language that we envisage, it lacks many others. In particular, it perpetuates the record­ centric notion 
that data elements should "live" inside documents (albeit metadata tagged). We think that a universal 
exchange language must facilitate the exchange of metadata tagged elements at a more atomic and 
disaggregated level, so that their varied assembly into documents or reports can itself be a robust, 
entrepreneurial marketplace of applications. In a similar vein, we view the semantics of metadata tags 
as an arena in which new players can participate (by "publishing"), not as one limited to a vocabulary 
controlled by the government"

Cheers,
Matthias Samwald

// DERI Galway, Ireland
// Information Retrieval Facility, Austria
// http://samwald.info