Health Level Seven (HL7) Data Types and  Top-Level Reference Information Model (RIM) Classes

HL7 version 3 RIM is a comprehensive model being developed by HL7 to satisfy the information needs of creating and maintaining interoperable messages and documents in health care. The official HL7 RIM methodology uses Unified Modeling Language. In creating a Protege-2000 version, I have separated out the definition of HL7 data types as a separate project that is included in the HL7 RIM project.

I have only modeled the top-level classes of the RIM (Entity, Role, Participation, Act, Act_relationship, Relationship_link). If you are interested in filling out the subclasses of these classes, please contact me so that we can create and maintain one consistent ontology.

Please note that the Protege-2000 representation of the RIM has no official status.

In creating this Protege-2000 ontology of HL7 data types and top-level RIM classes, I had to make a number of modeling decisions:

• All HL7 data types are modeled as classes in Protege-2000
• All Protege-2000 classes representing HL7 data type are modeled as instances of the HL7_Data_Type metaclass
• Instances of Concept Descriptors (CD) are concepts that can be organized in classification hierarchy. Thus the CD data type and its subtypes are modeled as Protege-200 metaclasses, whose instances are classes
• Protege-2000 doesn't support template constructs such as set, list, bag, and interval. Each template is modeled as a class with a 'members' slot. Instantiations of templates with specific classes (e.g., BAG<TELECOM> are modeled as subclasses of template classes (e.g. BAG), where the allowed values of the members slot are constrained to be instances of specific classes.
• The HL7 practice of 'restricting' a subclass by making certain attributes not applicable for the subclass is modeled in Protege-2000 as a subclass where these attributes are constrained to have cardinality zero. (Somebody should create a template-slot widget that does not show slots that are constrained to have cardinality zero.)
• Associations and attributes of HL7 classes are all slots of Protege-2000 classes
• The has_source, has_target, is_source_for, and is_target_for relationships between Act and Act_relationship have been renamed has_souce_act, has_target_act, is_source_for-act_relationship, and is_target_for_act_relationship. This renaming is necessary so that they are not confused with similar set of relationships between Role and Relationship_Link
• Constraints on the classes, attributes, and relationships have not been consistently modeled in this version of Protege-2000 representation of HL7 RIM data types and classes..

Contact: Samson Tu, Stanford Medical Informatics, Stanford University School of Medicine.

Download the HL7 data type and top-level RIM classes