Measurement Package

Overview

The Measurement package defines a minimum of semantics relating to quantitative measurement, units, and conversion, enabling the Quantity package of the openEHR Data Types Information Model to be correctly expressed. As for the Terminology package, a simple service interface is assumed, which provides useful functions to other parts of the reference model. The definitions underlying measurement and units come from a variety of sources, including:

CEN ENV 12435, Medical Informatics - Expression of results of measurements in health sciences (see http://www.centc251.org);
the Unified Code for Units of Measure (UCUM), developed by Gunther Schadow and Clement J. McDonald of The Regenstrief Institute.

These of course rest in turn upon a vast amount of literature and standards, mainly from ISO on the subject of scientific measurement.

Service Interface

A simple measurement data service interface is defined according to the figure below, enabling quantitative semantics to be used formally from within the Reference Model. Note that this service as currently defined in no way seeks to properly model the semantics of units, conversions etc - it provides only the minimum functions required by the openEHR Reference Model.

Figure 1. rm.support.measurement Package

Class Definitions

Unresolved include directive in modules/support/pages/measurement_package.adoc - include::../UML/classes/measurement_service.adoc[]