Overview

 

Two major and common rules are required for exchange of medical information. One is the data description method and the other is the data exchange method. In the beginning of development, the data exchange method was not particularly specified in the MML; only the data format was specified. The developed MML could be sent via a floppy disk, E-mail or FTP. The problem we encountered at the installation stage is that if there was no specification for the exchange method, it would be difficult to exchange the data automatically. When various data transmission methods are being developed, the data cannot be obtained unless the date is requested in the vendor-specified format. Assuming that information is exchanged at numerous hospitals and medical information providers, it is necessary to specify a method for request, response and deletion of data based on the MML. (It is not necessary to use this specification for exchange with a portable medium.)

Considering these features, this specification has been prepared in two parts.

Medical Markup Language Part I Data Format Specification

Medical Markup Language Part II Data Exchange Specification

This specification has used XML Version 1.0 recommended in W3C as a meta data description language for exchange.

The following 4 rules must be observed.

  1. Information particular to each medical application must be described in XML Namespace.
  2. XHTML must be used as Presentation Data (format including data for display). However, it was determined that the inclusion of all display tags is difficult and unnecessary; therefore, tags that should be included as MML were specified. (Refer to “Use of XHTML.”)
  3. The format for date, time, dateTime, timePeriod must be the specification of ISO 8601 [7].
  4. It is recommended that the same Prefix character strings as that used in this specification be used for Prefix of XML Namespace. It should operate according to the specification of XML Namespace when installed in the application.

This document explains the MML assuming that readers have a general knowledge of XML. Refer to reference documents [5, 6, 7] for details of XML.

 

[Acquisition of latest specification on WWW]

This document shows the version as of the current stage. For the latest version, refer to WWW [1].

MedXML Home Page : http://www.medxml.net/