What is ISO 12381 - time-related expressions for healthcare-specific problems about?
The purpose of ISO 12381 is to develop a standardized way of representing time-related expressions, such that all kinds of questions about the temporal organization of situations can be answered on the basis of the information available. This document provides representational tools for “explicit” time-related information.
ISO 12381 specifies a set of primitives and semantic relations needed for an unambiguous representation of explicit time-related expressions in health informatics. ISO 12381 also provides a set of principles for syntactic and semantic representation that allow the comparability of specific ontologies on time, and the exchange of time-related information that is expressed explicitly.
ISO 12381 is applicable to developers of medical information systems where there might be a need for explicit time-related concepts for internal organization (e.g. temporal data bases, temporal reasoning systems), and information modellers or knowledge engineers building models.
NOTE: ISO 12381 does not introduce or force a specific ontology of time, nor does it force the use of a fixed representation scheme for such an ontology.
NOTE: ISO 12381 is not intended to be used directly for representing what is true in time, reasoning about time, or representation of metrological time.
Who is ISO 12381 - time-related expressions for healthcare-specific problems for?
ISO 12381 on time-related expressions for healthcare-specific problems is useful for:
- Healthcare professionals and information providers
- Healthcare industries
- Experts involved in the development of semantic standards on precise subdomains in health care where time-related information needs to be covered
- Developers of medical information systems
- Medical information modellers or knowledge engineers
Why should you use ISO 12381 - time-related expressions for healthcare-specific problems?
Time is an important variable in healthcare, and standards are needed about how to represent information with explicit references to time. ISO 12381 is a first contribution to this harmonization process, focusing on “representation” and “explicit reference”.
ISO 12381 enhances, in a perspective of machine-machine and person-machine communication, the generation of statements that are guaranteed to be understood unambiguously with respect to the time-related expressions that are embedded within them.
ISO 12381 is helpful for experts involved in the development of semantic standards on precise subdomains in health care where time-related information needs to be covered, (e.g., in the study of pathochronology, i.e., the discipline dealing with the time course of specific diseases), and developers of interchange formats for messages in which time-related information is embedded.
ISO 12381 describes some conformance characteristics through which developers of health care information systems can label specific modules of their systems as to the degree they are compliant with the document.
