Greg Woodhouse wrote:
> --- Thomas Beale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > The above trees are pretty much what archetypes are
> > - archetypes are models for
> > such trees.
>
> Hmm...so if I could risk a naive question, would it be
> fair to say that archetypes corresponds to
> (hierarchies in) semantic networks? There's a paper
One archetype is a fairly self-contained formal definition of a concept,
such as "ante-natal exam" or "blood lipids results". It's hierarchies
are not classificaiton hierarchies, but structural ones. That is, they
indicate what the compositional structure of the information is, not the
meaning of each piece. Meanings are defined elsewhere - in
terminologies. The point of archetypes is to define models which express
the constraints on data instances, so as to know which instances can
still be called examples of the model. The constraints are statements
about allowed structure, terms (in particular positions), values, types,
state values and so on.
So a BP archetype gives the structure of a blood pressure measurement -
which is the structure of the information you are trying to create. If
you want the semantic definition of blood pressure, which may include
relationships of various kinds, definitions of I ... V sounds, and other
concepts, look in a terminology like SNOMED. The archetype uses these
definitions, it does not replicate them.
- thomas beale
