At 08:06 AM 9/12/2007, Kavitha Srinivas wrote:
1. Yes, as Chintan said, in the case where you had explicit negations in the data (e.g., the lab data rules out the presence of a certain infectious agent), you clearly want to use open world reasoning. However, if someone is not explicitly asserted to be on some prescription drug, it is fair to assume that they are not taking the drug (closed world assumption).
Actually, it is dangerous to assume anything if a patient is not explicitly asserted to be taking any particular drug--omissions on drug histories happen all the time... Likewise, making any generalized statements about when open- and closed-world reasoning are appropriate in health care is dangerous--one must be very specific about the context and specific case to assess whether the assumption is valid.
__ Daniel Rubin, MD, MS Clinical Asst. Professor, Radiology Research Scientist, Stanford Medical Informatics Scientific Director, National Center of Biomedical Ontology MSOB X-215 Stanford, CA 94305 650-725-5693
