Multi-level Modeling and the Role of Archetypes in the Design of Health Information Systems: a Modeling Example in Endoscopy

Multi-level modeling of health information systems helps to separate the tasks of application developers from those of the domain experts. In the technical side, developers use the small and generic models and specifications to be implemented in systems. At runtime, information systems are driven by the knowledge models called archetypes created by domain experts using high-level tools. Such systems can evolve as needed, based mainly on ongoing tool-enabled modeling work of domain experts, rather than by classical software maintenance and redeployment which is costly. In this study an internationally accepted terminology: Minimal Standard Terminology for Endoscopic Gastroenterology (MST) version 2 was first restructured and then modeled using the Archetype Editor and Workbench by choosing openEHR Reference Model and Archetypes. Alternative methods such as Protégé, HL7 and openSDE are also discussed.