Health informatics – Clinical knowledge resources – Metadata

This document specifies several metadata elements that describe resources containing medical knowledge (e.g. recommendations from professional groups, regulations by governmental authorities, clinical trial protocols from pharmaceutical companies, scientific manuscripts from research groups, advice to patients with a specific disease and review articles). Most of these resources are digital documents provided as web resources, accessible from databases or via file transfer, but the elements also apply to paper documents.

The metadata elements support unambiguous international understanding of important aspects of a resource, including its purpose, issuer, intended audience, legal status and scientific background. They do not describe individual medical records or include a detailed description of the content of the resource.

Main sections:

· Scope

· Normative references

· Terms and definitions

· Introduction to metadata

· Metadata element structure for clinical knowledge resources

· Annex A: List of metadata elements

· Annex B: Class diagram