Caregraf

Link Health-Data Now

Conor's Caregraf Blog

Datasets

Web-hosted vocabularies for patient care description.

Publishing Vocabularies

Caregrafs are collections of statements about a patient’s care. While some statements declare a name or date, most use medical concepts such as a type of condition or substance or drug.

To appear in a Caregraf, a concept’s definition needs to be somewhere on the web: each concept needs its own URL, that URL must be hosted by someone and… Read More »

The beating heart of a good EHR

Doctors are human beings – really. They don’t naturally blurt out the likes of …

Diabetes mellitus of mother complicating pregnancy childbirth or the puerperium unspecified as to episode of care

also known as ICD9 code 648.00. They select or type Pregnancy in Diabetes or perhaps the longer Diabetes Mellitus, in Pregnancy.

Here are two worlds – the… Read More »

Knowledge in Triples (K3), the first preview

10 to 12% of statements in VistA patient records assert a date.

We refuse no patient care statement – all are welcome. A statement may begin life in an EHR like VistA or in a HL7 v2 message or in the tags of a Continuity of Care Document (CCD), but as long as it asserts something about a patient’s… Read More »

NDFRT, decision-support everybody?

RxNORM defines drugs. It declares that Warfarin Oral Tablet is the ingredient Warfarin combined with the dose form Oral Tablet. It tells us that this compound is sold under four catchy names, Coumadin, Jantoven, Marfarin and Narfarin.

But there’s more inside RxNORM’s awful release format, a hefty gem from the VA called National Drug File, Reference Terminology (NDFRT). With NDFRT,… Read More »

RXNORM and co. should come in RDF

I’m not going to dwell on the horribles of RRF, the custom UMLS/RXNORM release format, but let me call out one …

104419|ENG||||||2701592|2701592|104419||RXNORM|SBD|104419|24 HR Felodipine 5 MG Extended ...
104419|ENG||||||2701593|2701593|104419||RXNORM|SY|104419|24 HR Plendil 5 MG Extended ...

It doesn’t jump out but find TTY, the lynchpin of the RRF format – each element of the normalized form can beRead More »

Shouting out good health

Oh good health – how can a medical record shout out good fortune? Here’s how …

     :finding snomed:160245001; # No current problems or disability
     :finding snomed:160244002; # No known allergies
     :finding snomed:182850000; # Drugs not issued
or the more general ...
     :finding snomed:408350003; # Patient not on self medications

and such an explicit endorsement of health is very… Read More »

Conor's Blog

About this Blog

It's a ramble around patient-data representation and exchange, following the mantra to work through examples, don't just talk principles.. Here are the topics ...

About Conor

Conor Dowling is the CTO of Caregraf.

What strikes me is the match: on one side is Linked-Data, the most powerful way to exchange diverse data, and, waiting on the other, too-long unattended, is the volume and diversity of health-data. All they need is a push.