Re: [COAS-List] SGML Thread on Report Types

[pop@protocol.com (Steve Tufty)]

> From: Wayne Wilson <wwilson@umich.edu>
> 
> BUT, one movement afoot is to provide each report with structure, ala a
> DTD.  Then one can standardize on DTD's (or not!).  Another approach
> with XML is based on HyTime where any number of reports can be
> dynamically defined according to a standardized meta-structure
> represented by a DTD! (this is the architecture Rachel refers to in her
> discussion with Wes.)  In fact, I would submit this a crux of the
> discussion thread:  should we exhaustively enumerate and standardize
> DTD's for all medical reports or should we standardize on a mechanism
> allowing us to dynamically create and define and use any number of
> reports (and their labels)?

While we all want to make this as open a standard as possible, 
we need to remind ourselves of the classical issues with HL7 
- where there are many dialects, and it is difficult to resolve 
the meaning of the observation.

The LQS has helped resolve many of these issues, and perhaps the 
solution is to recommend a LQS entry/lookup of what this new 
dynamically created report, abeit a difficult challenge, as if
is was existing, we would use the existing one.

pop