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. 1998 Jul-Aug;5(4):357-72.
doi: 10.1136/jamia.1998.0050357.

The guideline interchange format: a model for representing guidelines

L Ohno-Machado  1 , J H Gennari, S N Murphy, N L Jain, S W Tu, D E Oliver, E Pattison-Gordon, R A Greenes, E H Shortliffe, G O Barnett
Affiliations

The guideline interchange format: a model for representing guidelines

L Ohno-Machado et al. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 1998 Jul-Aug.

Abstract

Objective: To allow exchange of clinical practice guidelines among institutions and computer-based applications.

Design: The GuideLine Interchange Format (GLIF) specification consists of GLIF model and the GLIF syntax. The GLIF model is an object-oriented representation that consists of a set of classes for guideline entities, attributes for those classes, and data types for the attribute values. The GLIF syntax specifies the format of the test file that contains the encoding.

Methods: Researchers from the InterMed Collaboratory at Columbia University, Harvard University (Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital), and Stanford University analyzed four existing guideline systems to derive a set of requirements for guideline representation. The GLIF specification is a consensus representation developed through a brainstorming process. Four clinical guidelines were encoded in GLIF to assess its expressivity and to study the variability that occurs when two people from different sites encode the same guideline.

Results: The encoders reported that GLIF was adequately expressive. A comparison of the encodings revealed substantial variability.

Conclusion: GLIF was sufficient to model the guidelines for the four conditions that were examined. GLIF needs improvement in standard representation of medical concepts, criterion logic, temporal information, and uncertainty.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
GLIF classes and attributes. Classes (shown in boxes) are arranged in a hierarchy. Each class has its own attributes (shown in a list) as well as the attributes it inherits from the class above. Note: k_of_n indicates k criteria from a total of n criteria; WWW, World Wide Web.
Figure 2
Figure 2
A portion of a GLIF encoding of a simple vaccine guideline.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Graphic representation of the simple vaccine guideline.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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