The development of clinical document standards for semantic interoperability in China

Abstract

Objectives: This study is aimed at developing a set of data groups (DGs) to be employed as reusable building blocks for the construction of the eight most common clinical documents used in China's general hospitals in order to achieve their struc-tural and semantic standardization. Methods: The Diagnostics knowledge framework, the related approaches taken from the Health Level Seven (HL7), the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), and the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) and 1, 487 original clinical records were considered together to form the DG architecture and data sets. The internal structure, content, and semantics of each DG were then defined by mapping each DG data set to a corre-sponding Clinical Document Architecture data element and matching each DG data set to the metadata in the Chinese Na-tional Health Data Dictionary. By using the DGs as reusable building blocks, standardized structures and semantics regarding the clinical documents for semantic interoperability were able to be constructed. Results: Altogether, 5 header DGs, 48 sec-tion DGs, and 17 entry DGs were developed. Several issues regarding the DGs, including their internal structure, identifiers, data set names, definitions, length and format, data types, and value sets, were further defined. Standardized structures and semantics regarding the eight clinical documents were structured by the DGs. Conclusions: This approach of constructing clinical document standards using DGs is a feasible standard-driven solution useful in preparing documents possessing se-mantic interoperability among the disparate information systems in China. These standards need to be validated and refined through further study. © 2011 The Korean Society of Medical Informatics.