CCTOS:  Information Interoperability

• Issues:
  • The project should focus on patient care.  Clinical modifiers are mandatory in patient care practice. For example degree of certitude, intensity, etc... These clinical attributes are not yet well standardized.  If available at all they are usually represented in free text. 
    
  • Historically standard have been designed mainly for epidemiological purposes.  Official "standards" did contribute to alleviate the interoperability problems.  However only to a limited extend since proprietary softwares companies  are always trying to avoid to expose how they work internally. Standards defined many years ago in very different contexts are not necessarily a panacea for our current purposes.
• Approaches:
  • Of course when useful, use official standards, but we may need more.
    
  • Open Source is expected to become a major factor of interoperability.
  • References to dictionaries should be systematically prefixed, with worldwide unique prefix.
  • While classifications of academic diagnoses are very well standardised, as for example the ICD from the WHO, more should be developed in the domain of "Heath Issues" concepts and links to related knowledge.