Artikel
Customizable Attribution of Model Elements to represent IT Architectures in 3LGM²
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Veröffentlicht: | 24. September 2021 |
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Gliederung
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Modeling information system architectures is essential to overcome the complexity of today’s healthcare IT infrastructures. The 3LGM² tool helps to model the current state or a planned state of e.g. a hospital, a healthcare network or a medical research infrastructure and therefore has an important role in the information management of healthcare facilities [1], [2], [3]. The 3LGM2IHE research project is not only concerned with mapping Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) features in the 3-layer graph-based metamodel (3LGM) modeling approach [4], but also with interoperability standards that are becoming popular, like FHIR and OpenEHR [5], [6]. We don't strive to represent them completely, but to provide modelers with useful aspects of them to consider when modeling and documenting information system architectures. Our objective is to find mechanisms to provide this functionality in the 3LGM² tool, but without requiring costly changes to the underlying metamodel. Here we benefit from the fact that we used a generic approach to metamodel. After analyzing the requirements, we got the following results: In the 3LGM² tool it should be possible at runtime to add further attributes to existing classes or to reuse already existing attributes. These attributes should be typable, groupable, and insertable into user-defined tabs that appear in properties dialogs of model elements. Furthermore, it should be possible to use these attribute sets as a template and thus create virtual subclasses. These should be usable to derive instances that inherit the attributes of the virtual subclass. We show how this mechanism can be used to represent FHIR resources, XDS metadata objects and OpenEHR archetypes when modeling IT architectures. For example, the representation form of an object type can be equipped with XDS metadata, such as typeCode, classCode, eventCodeList, mimeType, formatCode, etc.. A representation as FHIR resource could be another virtual subclass of representation form providing the attributes to describe FHIR resources, e.g. the resourceType, a link to the definition of a FHIR profile at Simplifier or to the implementation guide. A representation of an object type as an OpenEHR archetype could, for example, have an attribute that contains a reference to the underlying information model in the Clinical Knowledge Manager. The designed solution avoids adjusting the metamodel. Users are able to add new attributes to existing metamodel classes, to group sets of attributes, place them in tabs in the property dialogs and define them to virtual subtypes. Subsequently, the attributes defined in this way are available for modeling, i.e. they can be used to better describe model elements and increase the expressiveness of the model. This enables not only to map the presented interoperability standards, but also in general to add further properties to the existing metamodel classes and to make subclasses derivable to model future aspects. Thereby neither an adaptation of the metamodel nor even of the 3LGM² tool itself is necessary. Further planning deals with the provision of typical attribute sets for common use cases, which are directly provided in the 3LGM² tool.
Acknowledgements: Funding by DFG (315068407), funding codes: BE3663/2-2, BI1930/2-2, ME5367/1-2, WI1605/9-2.
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
The authors declare that an ethics committee vote is not required.
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