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

["David W. Forslund" <dwf@lanl.gov>]

At 11:04 AM 11/4/98 -0500, Wayne Wilson wrote:
>Tim Brinson wrote:
>> 
>>  Given that each
>> Observation has a QualifiedCode for the observation type it would be
>> used for the report type in this case.  Now, who defines the codes for
>> reports is another matter.  Over time there may be some standardized
>> ones but a lot of them will be locally defined by a hospital or maybe
>> even by providers.  COAS should be able to work with any of these.
>> 
>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)?
>

This is, in essence, what I was trying to say in my email yesterday
regarding XML
and PIDS.  If we want to support XML, I believe we need to have a mechanism
to dynamically 
create and define reports (probably with a specified DTD).  Just providing
an XML file 
without metadata content would make it different to deal with an arbitrary
report or 
observation.

>  Another issue here is that if reports have structure, treating them as
>a single thing from COAS's perspective will be the logical equivalent of
>BLOB's in RDBMS's, not very useful at the end of the day. So you need a
>generic mechanism to represent parts and then structure.

I agree.  And this is just another argument for being able to define the
structure (with a DTD?).


Dave