well… good question. So in other words: if there is a units field
specifically for ‘formal’ units, is it UCUM only or not? I would have
said it should be except for annoying problems like the one Heath
mentioned - UCUM uses ‘*’ for exponent instead of ‘^’ which almost
everyone else uses…
We could use the same approach as an openEHR DV_PARSABLE, where the name
of the syntax is stored as well, but this is IMO inviting a different
kind of pain…
My answer would be: let’s get UCUM doing everything we need (for the
formal units field I mean, not the informal one); if we can’t, we need a
new UCUM.
thomas
Hi Thomas,
‘^’ is a special character in HL7 V2.x messages - so by changing ‘*’ back to ‘^’ you would break implementations of HL7 ORU messages. We already
see this in some lab messages - if you try to parse the units field you get “x10” instead of “x10^9/L”, because OBX-6 is a coded element (CE) data type.
UCUM also uses annotations which are a bit unsightly e.g. mmol/mol creat is expressed as mmol/mol {creat}. I’m all in favour of a display component
for units of measure - in the end you are still getting coded data.
Thanks, I wonder, should such a server get funding to run in a professional hosting-environment. I never thought this was maintained by private persons.
I think we must be thankful to Gunther for doing this.
Seriously though, why isn’t it hosted at Regenstrief or HL7, or even better, NLM? It’s one of the best pieces of work in the history of health informatics - it really should be kept alive for the long term.
I’m sure Gunther would enjoy it if you helped out with some funding
I wouldn't mind to spend a small amount, if it is necessary, but I think there are other more wealthier institutions which also profit from this work.
Nictiz for example. (Dutch governmental institution for Health ICT).
They have a lot of information about UCUM and how good it is on their website.
I wrote a message to the chief Nictiz terminology specialist to ring some bells. I don know if she will do that, but that is as far as my influence goes.
Didn't work out. That was all I can do. Now it is for real influencers and ambassadors of the good cause to do their best to get a solid ground for UCUM.
I received a message from Nictiz, in the end they were surprised as we were, that the UCUM website was not hosted professionally. UCUM is regarded as a very important standard in the Netherlands.
They are discussing the case with Daniel Freeman from Regenstrief, and seeing that an improved version of the UCUM standard website will be transferred soon to the infrastructure that hosts the LOINC website too.
