DATA-STORAGE AND KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION FOR CLINICAL WORKSTATIONS

The representation of patient information for use in clinical workstat ions is a complex problem. Ideally, it should be addressed in a way th at allows multiple uses of the data, including simple manual review, s haring and pooling across institutions, and as input to knowledge-base d decision support systems. To a great extent, this means coding infor mation with controlled medical vocabularies, but it does not mean that all information must be codable before workstations are feasible. Thi s paper defines some of the choices, both current and future, that are available to address the needs of controlled medical vocabularies for representing data and knowledge in clinical workstations and explores some of the implications of those choices.