Study Of Constructing And Applying XML Schema Of Chinese National Health Data Dictionary

The immediate and accurate medical information is very helpful for patients, doctors, decision maker and social community to resolve the health problems. With the information, the clinical doctors can obtain suggestions for the therapies or other medical treatment to reduce and avoid the medical errors; the public medical workers can be aware of the characteristics and rules of diseases and other incidences threatening the public health to keep community members healthy. The information of the occurrence and development of the public medical incidences, either regional or national, and victims can be provided for the persons concerned to take immediate and proper responding measures.With the promoted popularization of the network techniques, more and more people have realized that network can conveniently and quickly transport the immediate information to us. However, this information is just suitable for reading, not for storage or exchange. As to the medical service, the needed information should not only be transmitted quickly, but be effectively exchanged among different medical institutions and stored for a long time as well. By the study on the application of the medical information of foreign countries, we have realized:1. The data standard (message model) of medical services should firstly be set to guarantee the data format (message structure) and expression pattern (message content) of the medical services unified and standardized.2. The XML format file should be selected as the data (message) carrier for the transmission and exchange in the network.3. XML schema definition language should be employed to construct the data-standardized XML Schema file, and XML file should be defined and confined structurally and semantically and its effectiveness should be tested and proved, indicating each datum of the XML conforms to data standard (message model).4. The data extraction and the display of XML are not specified.With the reference to the study on application of the medical information in the foreign countries, we tried to define National Health Data Dictionary (NHDD) with the XML schema in this study. The results include:1. the definition of NHDD XML file general application and standard elements;2. the definition of NHDD datatype;3. the definition of the basic property of NHDD metadata;4. the definition of the elements and structure of party entity;5. the definition of the elements and structure of environ entity;6. the definition of the elements and structure of environ entity;7. the definition of the elements and structure of enabling entity;8. the definition of structure of XML information exchange;9. the definition of XML header and trailer;10. the definition of XML body;11. the definition of the version. By defining the basic data of NHDD with XML schema, XML elements collection can be provided for the construction of XML schema of data sets in other fields to set up the unified component and information structure. The semantically definite XML file is used in the transmission and exchange of medical data, and its effects on the standardization of medical information in our country show as follows:1. A large number of human, natural and financial resources are saved in the demand investigation, data analysis and database design in the course of the project development, which facilitates the development of a variety of medical information systems.2. With NHDD XML schema, the information exchange pattern and the database design pattern can be reused in the development of the information system so that the implication and expression of data in a variety of independent applied software are unified for the shared data.3. Through the cooperation with different standard-setting institutions by developing XML schema in different fields, the information exchange among medical service institutions is guaranteed.4. NHDD XML schema acts as a tool to integrate the collected and required information in different aspects of medical service at different levels to promote the cooperation of medical information among different medical institutions.5. Through the reconstruction of basic elements in the NHDD XML schema, XML schema of national medical statistical chart is constructed, in which the content semanteme is unified and data quality is improved.