There are a number of detailed clinical models available to choose from, from diverse backgrounds, for many differing purposes and with varying degrees of success and penetration. More are arriving on the scene as time goes on – only this week the Clinical Information Models from ONC in the US have been released for their first 2 week period of public comment, and I'd never heard of them before. I haven’t been able to find a single document pointing to an overview on available models – current or past. So, given the current activity development of a quality standard around detailed clinical models in ISO TC 215 and the number of models under development, I thought it timely to try to co-ordinate sourcing a picture of the detailed clinical model landscape.
Well aware that my understanding is limited to the openEHR archetypes I work with, I thought I’d take this opportunity to draw together some of my research and request some assistance from others to crowdsource a picture of the detailed clinical model environment that we operate within.
I have published my initial attempt as a Google doc, see below. The existing information needs to be verified; there are clearly many gaps that need to be filled in; and there are probably other DCMs to be added.
EDIT the DCM environment document...
Anyone can participate, and if you edit, please add your name/org/email to the Contributor list, so that attribution can be made.
Please feel free to edit; to add new DCMs; to correct and verify the facts. Add a column, suggest changes to structure where you see a need... Just make a comment, if you like.
You can clearly see all the gaps in our collective knowledge at present…
Let’s see if we can actually pull together a useful resource. The intent is collaboration to achieve a goal that is possibly greater than most of us can achieve by ourselves.
All contributions are gratefully received and can be freely shared with anyone who is interested.
The latest crowdsourced version of the document appears below. You will need to scroll to seen the entire content.
[googleapps domain="docs" dir="document/pub" query="id=11xGZs4drfwb7TY15Iwpk52UIxZcFhqMcMp1i3yV4To8&embedded=true" /]
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Further Comment: 11 August 2011
I've been asked where this work is going and what is planned...
The answer is that I haven’t a specific plan.
To my knowledge there has been no environmental scan to explore what the range of models is, to my knowledge, so thought I’d try myself. I spent a day to develop the initial framework, sparse though it was. Googling was a very frustrating experience and finding out the information that we’re interested in from available websites was not easy.
Hence I thought I’d experiment with the crowd sourcing approach. I know there is a rising tide of interest in the generic concept of detailed clinical models and a lot of confusion about the work in ISO and HL7.
I hoped it might contribute to clarifying the situation and providing a concrete anchor on which to base discussions on detailed clinical models.
Worst case scenario, the final result may be little more than a brainstorming, however it will at least form the basis for anyone interested to launch a more rigorous research program, including potentially feeding into the ISO work. Best case scenario, we may have a significant resource. Final outcome will probably be somewhere in between.
I’m happy to leave it online as a general resource – it seems to have generated a lot of interest. I'm hopeful that it will keep evolving.