Hi Andrew The principles of specialisation have been described in our development environment and there is a placeholder for the documentation in the archetype system document.
Our initial thoughts are at: http://www.deepthought.com.au/it/archetypes/output/specialisation.html The rules that we are working with but are not fully embodied in the editor are: An archetype that is a specialisation of a parent contains data with archetype node IDs that conform to that of the parent. This means that: 1) All paths mandatory in the parent are present in the child 2) All paths optional in the parent may be present in the child, and if so will have the same path The meaning of any element or cluster expressed in the parent is preserved in the child (although it may be narrowed). If it is not identical then it will have an id that is a specialisation of the parent id. at0001 -> at0001.1 Optional elements (and clusters) in the parent do not have to be available in the child. New elements can be available in the child - their meaning is guaranteed to be different than that included in the parent. They have a code that identifies the level of specialisation, and these may be specialised in subsequent children. A new id at level 0 is at0001, a new id at level 1 is at0.1, a new id at level 2 is at0.0.1. The editor enforces most of these, but specialisation of clusters (allowed in the laboratory archetype) introduces issues. These rules do need documentation and it would be helpful to have others think about this. Cheers, Sam > Hi, > > > > Does anyone know what it actually means to specialize an archetype? And > what the rules are? > > > > I looked at the archetype editor and created a specialized archetype of > another. The editor seemed to just copy the parent archetype and then > allowed the user to change anything about the archetype. > > For example, I can now make a mandatory field optional, or I can extend > a parent archetype with new mandatory fields that don?t exist as > optional fields in the parent archetype > > > > To me this particular example is not safe as one of the basic rules of > specializing archetypes is you should be able to validate any new > specialized EHR data against the parent archetype. > > > > -Andrew > - If you have any questions about using this list, please send a message to d.lloyd at openehr.org
