Observation, Clinical Assessment and Clinical Annotation

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Background

An email in mid December 2014 raised the question of clinical annotation:

"Is it ClinicalAssessment the best way to model a clinical annotation instead of Observation?"

A number of email exchanges that followed showed the non clinical community appeared to have considerable confusion over the three concepts: observation, clinical assessment and annotation.

This wiki page is intended to provide some clarity from the clinical perspectives to help resolve the confusion.

Observation

• Observation:

- Dictionary definition: "the act of watching somebody/something carefully for a period of time, especially to learn something"

- Source: http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/observation

Definitions

• Clinical:

- Dictionary definitions:

- Relating to the bedside treatment of a patient or to the course of the disease

- Relating to the observed symptoms and course of a disease

- Source: http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/clinical

• Clinical observation:

- Definition:

"the act of watching and obtaining information about a patient's clinical status including signs, symptoms, and course of a disease"

- HL7 Perspective:

HL7 treats "observation" as "documentation of observation"; as such, observation in HL7 is semantically equivalent to "observation result"

• Examples of clinical observations:

- "Clinical observations include estimation of haemoglobin-oxygen saturation (SpO2, pulse oximetry), oxygen therapy, respiratory rate, heart/pulse rate, blood pressure (systolic, diastolic and mean), temperature (including measurement method), sedation and pain. In certain clinical circumstances further observations (for example neurological) may be required"

- Source: http://www.rch.org.au/rchcpg/hospital_clinical_guideline_index/Observation_and_Continuous_Monitoring/