An event model of medical information representation.

OBJECTIVE: Develop a model for structured and encoded representation of medical information that supports human review, decision support applications, ad hoc queries, statistical analysis, and natural-language processing. DESIGN: A medical information representation model was developed from manual and semiautomated analysis of patient data. The key assumption of the model is that medical information can be represented as a series of linked events. The event representation has two main components. The first component is a frame or template definition that specifies the attributes of the event. The second component is a structured vocabulary, the terms of which are taken as the values of the slots in the event template structure. Individual event instances are linked by specific named relationships. RESULTS: The proposed model was used to represent a chest-radiograph report. CONCLUSIONS: The event model of medical information representation provides a mechanism for formal definition of the logical structure of medical data and allows explicit time-oriented and associative relationships between event instances.