Integrating detailed clinical models into application development tools.

Several groups are currently working on defining detailed clinical models (also called templates or archetypes) that are refinements of abstract medical models like the HL7 (Health Level Seven) Reference Information Model. At IHC, we have created over 3,000 detailed clinical models in the last five years. These models have become an essential part of the architecture of our electronic medical record (EMR) system. As a result, we have created an increasingly sophisticated set of tools that allow the models to be searched, viewed, and ultimately incorporated into medical applications. These browsers have some commonality with terminology browsers, but are distinct in that the explicit structure of the information models must be accommodated. In this paper we report our experience in making browsers for detailed clinical models that are integrated with application authoring tools.