Interoperability Concepts was: [FOSS_health] my summary of discussion

[Tim Cook]

On Wed, 2007-06-20 at 07:08 +1000, Tim C wrote:
> There is a newish set of documents on interoperability on the HL7 web
> site at
> http://www.hl7.org/documentcenter/public/wg/ehr/ComingtoTerms2007-03-22.zip
> 
> I've only scanned the presentation, but looks useful.

Thanks for pointing out this link Tim.


The document "Coming to terms February 2007.doc" is an important read
for those interested in interoperability and even those wondering why
all the fuss about it.  

I necessarily have issues with the way they define/discuss/prioritize
Process Interoperability but that is a matter for another discussion.

This document does a great job of defining and even addressing the core
problems of interoperability.  If read closely (pgs. 23-26) one will see
that in order to achieve semantic interoperability; the key is context
related.

Page 28 introduces Blois' Funnel which is key to understanding the
complexities and importance of recording health care information as part
of a longitudinal health record. 

Clinical systems more often than not miss the importance of the temporal
components when recording information that may have a lifetime many
years beyond the patient. These temporal components add a complexity
that many attempt to ignore.  However, I assert that these will only
come back to haunt the developers or at least the end users.  I recently
found that a book I enjoyed from a few years ago, is now available on
the Internet. If you are interested in the temporal complexity issue
(and you should be) then please at least read the Preface to this book:
http://www.cs.arizona.edu/people/rts/tdbbook.pdf

There is a pre-publication copy of a paper addressing the issue of
clinical information interoperability and computability at:
http://www.openehr.org/publications/health_IT/MedInfo2007-BealeHeard-FINAL.pdf


Regards,
Tim   


-- 
Timothy Cook, MSc
Health Informatics Research Services
http://home.comcast.net/~tw_cook/
01-904-322-8582
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://mailman.oshca.org/pipermail/foss_health/attachments/20070619/db6ddf59/attachment.pgp