Today there are two alternatives to achieve the formalization of multilevel modeling. The first is to extend the archetypes and templates to support the new requirements, expanding its capacity for representation of clinical content. The second alternative is to define new devices using archetypes and templates, expand their modeling capabilities but without modifying them. This second approach seems the most successful, especially considering that the specification of archetypes and templates for being robust and stable, and currently serving well the purpose of modeling clinical content.
For example, in a multilevel approach could have the following artifacts, where higher levels artifacts artifacts may use lower levels:
- Level 1:
- Information Model: elements with minimal semantic
- Level 2:
- Model archetypes: self-contained general clinical
- Model templates: particular clinical content and aggregate
- Level 3:
- Query model: standardized collection of clinical information archetypal
- Level 4:
- Model Rules: rules definition and implementation of clinical information about archetypal
- Information aggregation model: definition of aggregations of clinical archetypes for calculating and evaluating statistics, indicators and series.
- Level 5:
- Messages model: structuring information in messages
- Reports model: structuring information in reports
- Level 6:
- User interface model: guidelines/directives on how information is displayed
A possible case of application of multi-level approach may be to build a monthly report to the aggregation of clinical cases in an emergency department of a hospital. Then, at level 2 should have modeled the classification of a patient, for example by reason of consultation and / or diagnosis. At level 3 should have defined a query for emergency patients, filtering by diagnosis. At level 4 is defined aggregation numbers of patients by diagnosis (which uses the previously defined query). At level 5 you define the report where this and other information will be represented. And at level 6 defines how to render graphical information to be viewed by a user. This flexibility is achieved without modifying the application software (the elements defined in each layer are independent of technology), as it would add new elements. with new capabilities, user demand, and also the elements already defined in each layer can be reused by new elements in the upper layers.