Data Structures Information Model

Acknowledgements

The work reported in this paper has been funded in by the following organisations:

  • University College London - Centre for Health Informatics and Multi-professional Education (CHIME);

  • Ocean Informatics;

  • Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC), under the Cooperative Research Centres Program through the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet of the Commonwealth Government of Australia.

Thanks to Grahame Grieve of Kestral Computing, Australia for general input and examples relating to History data.

Special thanks to David Ingram, Emeritus Professor of Health Informatics at UCL, who provided a vision and collegial working environment ever since the days of GEHR (1992).

Preface

Purpose

This document describes the common data structures used in openEHR reference model, including lists, tables, trees, and history.

The intended audience includes:

  • Standards bodies producing health informatics standards;

  • Academic groups using openEHR;

  • The open source healthcare community;

  • Solution vendors;

  • Medical informaticians and clinicians interested in health information.

  • Health data managers.

Related Documents

Prerequisite documents for reading this document include:

Status

This specification is in the STABLE state. The development version of this document can be found at https://specifications.openehr.org/releases/RM/latest/data_structures.html.

Known omissions or questions are indicated in the text with a 'to be determined' paragraph, as follows:

TBD: (example To Be Determined paragraph)

Feedback

Feedback may be provided on the openEHR RM specifications forum.

Issues may be raised on the specifications Problem Report tracker.

To see changes made due to previously reported issues, see the RM component Change Request tracker.

Conformance

Conformance of a data or software artifact to an openEHR specification is determined by a formal test of that artifact against the relevant openEHR Implementation Technology Specification(s) (ITSs), such as an IDL interface or an XML-schema. Since ITSs are formal derivations from underlying models, ITS conformance indicates model conformance.

Amendment Record

Issue Details Raiser Completed

RM Release 1.1.0

1.7.4

SPECPUB-7: Convert citations to bibtex form.

T Beale

15 Dec 2019

SPECRM-77. Add ELEMENT.null_reason.

I McNicoll,
H Leslie,
S Ljosland Bakke,
T Schuler,
T Beale

15 Oct 2019

SPECPUB-3. Correct UML conversion error in EVENT.data, which is of generic parameter type T.

S Arikan,
T Beale

21 Feb 2019

RM Release 1.0.4

1.7.3

SPECRM-83. Improve documentation of INTERVAL_EVENT and POINT_EVENT (addresses SPECPR-197).

P Pazos,
T Beale

27 Dec 2018

RM Release 1.0.3

1.7.2

SPECRM-42. Clarify definition of HISTORY.summary (addresses SPECPR-81).

I McNicoll,
G Grieve

15 Nov 2015

Release 1.0.2

1.7.1

SPEC-271. Correct minor inconsistencies in ITEM_TABLE specification and example.

R Chen

05 Nov 2008

SPEC-257: Correct minor typos and clarify text.

C Ma,
R Chen,
T Cook

SPEC-255. Correct minor error in INTERVAL_EVENT.width documentation.

A Patterson

SPEC-283. Correct spelling of ELEMENT.null_flavor attribute to null_flavour.

H Frankel

Release 1.0.1

1.7

SPEC-200. Correct Release 1.0 typographical errors. Minor cosmetic changes to diagrams. Correct return types of ITEM_TABLE functions to CLUSTER rather than List<ELEMENT>.

D Lloyd,
T Beale

26 Sep 2006

SPEC-207: Change ITEM_TABLE columns to rows.

S Heard

SPEC-219: Use constants instead of literals to refer to terminology in RM.

R Chen

SPEC-220: Tighten semantics of HISTORY.period and EVENT.time.

A Patterson

Release 1.0

1.6

SPEC-14. Adjust History. Major simplifcation to package; make Events absolute in time.

S Heard
T Beale

16 Dec 2005

SPEC-155: Summary data.

S Heard

SPEC-183. Remove root node from ITEM_TREE.

G Grieve

SPEC-185. Improved EVENT model.

S Heard

SPEC-155: Summary data.

S Heard
G Grieve

SPEC-192: Add display-as-absolute facility to delta Events in History (added explanation only).

S Heard

SPEC-193: Simplify INTERVAL_EVENT for archetyping and paths. Revert to one math function per INTERVAL_EVENT.

S Heard

SPEC-196: Rename HISTORY.items to events.

S Heard

SPEC-192. Support change, increase and decrease Events in History.

S Heard
D Lloyd

Release 0.96

Release 0.95

1.5.1

SPEC-48. Pre-release review of documents. Fixed HISTORY UML diagram - remove superfluous T:XXX (no semantic change). Converted parameter types to UML box form.

D Lloyd

22 Feb 2005

1.5

SPEC-101. Improve modelling of Structure classes.

DSTC

10 Dec 2004

SPEC-100. Correct inheritance error in ITEM_STRUCTURE package.

T Beale

SPEC-24. Revert meaning to STRING and rename as archetype_node_id_.

S Heard,
T Beale

SPEC-118. Make package names lower case.

T Beale

SPEC-123. EVENT should inherit from LOCATABLE.

R Chen

SPEC-124. Fix path syntax in data structures IM document.

T Beale

Release 0.9

1.4

SPEC-19. Add HISTORY and STRUCTURE supertype.

T Beale

09 Mar 2004

SPEC-28. Change name of STRUCTURE class to avoid clashes.

H Frankel

SPEC-89. Remove ITEM.displayed.

DSTC

SPEC-91. Correct anomalies in use of CODE_PHRASE and DV_CODED_TEXT.

T Beale

SPEC-67. Change EVENT class to enable math function interval A measurements. Renamed EVENT.duration and SINGLE_EVENT.duration to width.

S Heard

Formally validated using ISE Eiffel 5.4.

T Beale

1.3.3

SPEC-41. Visually differentiate primitive types in openEHR documents.

D Lloyd

04 Sep 2003

1.3.2

SPEC-13 Rename key classes - rename COMPOUND to CLUSTER to conform with CEN 13606.

D Kalra,
T Beale

20 Jun 2003

1.3.1

Improved heading layout, package naming. Made HISTORY.is_periodic a function.

T Beale,
Z Tun

18 Mar 2003

1.3

Formally validated using ISE Eiffel 5.2. No changes.

T Beale

20 Feb 2003

1.2.1

Minor corrections to terminology_id invariants.

Z Tun

08 Jan 2003

1.2

Defined packages properly and moved HISTORY classes from EHR RM. No change to semantics.

T Beale

18 Dec 2002

1.1.1

Minor corrections: SINGLE_S new function.

T Beale

10 Nov 2002

1.1

Minor adjustments due to change in DV_CODED_TEXT.

T Beale

01 Nov 2002

1.0

Taken from Common RM.

T Beale

11 Oct 2002

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