CDA R3 Components in Definition Mood

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Submitted by: Keith W. Boone	Revision date: 16:56, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
Submitted date: 16:56, 13 February 2009 (UTC)	Change request ID: <<Change Request ID>>

Issue

CDA Release 2.0 describes how documents are communicated between systems, but does not provide a mechanism that allows for "pre-canned" document, section or entry definitions to be supplied to an information system. Similar to the way Word Processing applications allow for common components to be defined and recorded as "tempates" (I wish there was another word, that one has so many connotations in HL7), it would be ideal if CDA R3 defined the static content that would be used for these definitions.

Recommendation

Support Document, Section and Entry content entry CMETs in Definition mood using CDA R3. These CMETS could be used with the payload of dynamic messages to support exchange of "templates".

Rationale

Enable the exchange of "templates" for documents between systems that does not require understanding of HL7 MDF or Tooling.

Discussion

An additional point of discussion is how these "templates" (I wish there was another word to use) could contain descriptions of the information that can be entered (so that they can be treated as forms). One thought here would be to allow the use something like XForms inside these definitions. The benefit

Recommended Action Items

Define an R-MIM for Document, Section and Entry in definition mood, and provide examples of these components.