Hello Gerard, You make excellent points. My intent is only to move toward a global standard structure for health information that lends itself to such an approach. Standardizing the structure of 80% of the content in medical records would be a vast improvement over the present.
In a very real sense, even free-text, narrative information is "structured and coded" in the form of ASCII symbols... still an improvement over hand-written paper charts. If the medical concepts, however, are so complex for a particular encounter that we must utilize a coding structure as complex as "English" to express them.. then that's what we'll have to use. English is certainly a more difficult structure for computers to work with, but not impossible. Christopher J. Feahr, O.D. Optiserv Consulting (Vision Industry) Office: (707) 579-4984 Cell: (707) 529-2268 http://Optiserv.com http://VisionDataStandard.org ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gerard Freriks" <gf...@luna.nl> To: "Christopher Feahr" <chris at optiserv.com>; "Thomas Clark" <lakewood at copper.net> Cc: "Karsten Hilbert" <Karsten.Hilbert at gmx.net>; <openehr-technical at openehr.org> Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 3:35 PM Subject: Re: HISTORY DATA SET IN EPR > Hi, > > As a GP with 20 years of experience in the Netherlands I learned that free > text plus a not to complicated set of codes (ICPC) is sufficient for daily > practice. We could generate automatic advice for medication based on > complaints or diagnosis. > > ICPC contains roughly 2000 complaints, diagnoses and procedures. > It will cover 80% of every thing a GP will encounter during the day. > > The provision of medicine is an art. > The registration of all medical (and other) relevant facts and findings is > retelling the story of the pati?nt. It is a narritive process. > Have we ever seen a piece of literature completely written in complex codes? > > The study of Archetypes (see the OpenEHR website) will reveal that > Archetypes plus free text plus codes will enable future physicians a lot of > flexibility and expressive power. > Much of the flexibility will depend on the ontology (medical knowledge and > knwoledge of the world) behind the scenes. > > And bye the way. > In the R&D facility where I work we have a very powerfull tool for analysis > of free text. Recently a lot of progress has been been at this. > If the free text is 'enriched' with Archetypes this process of meaningfull > data extraction will become much more easy. > > Gerard Freriks > > -- > Gerard Freriks, MD > Convenor CEN/TC251 WG1 > > TNO-PG > Zernikedreef 9 > Leiden > The Netherlands > > +31 71 5181388 > +31 654 792800 > > > > > -- <private> -- > Gerard Freriks, arts > Huigsloterdijk 378 > 2158 LR Buitenkaag > The Netherlands > > +31 252 544896 > +31 654 792800 > > > > From: "Christopher Feahr" <chris at optiserv.com> > > Organization: Optiserv Consulting > > Reply-To: "Christopher Feahr" <chris at optiserv.com> > > Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 07:32:52 -0700 > > To: "Thomas Clark" <lakewood at copper.net> > > Cc: "Karsten Hilbert" <Karsten.Hilbert at gmx.net>, > > <openehr-technical at openehr.org> > > Subject: Re: HISTORY DATA SET IN EPR > > > > Presently, each doctor and EMR software vendor is cooking up his own > > shorthand-language, and I'm suggesting that information should be > > reduced as much as possible to a standard set of codes. > > - > If you have any questions about using this list, > please send a message to d.lloyd at openehr.org - If you have any questions about using this list, please send a message to d.lloyd at openehr.org
