Clinical Practice Guidelines, published by HL7 International / Clinical Decision Support. This guide is not an authorized publication; it is the continuous build for version 3.0.0-ballot built by the FHIR (HL7® FHIR® Standard) CI Build. This version is based on the current content of https://github.com/HL7/cqf-recommendations/ and changes regularly. See the Directory of published versions

Knowledge Representation Overview

This page was reorganized and editorially revised in this version of the guide (see FHIR-59639 in the change log).

Knowledge representation is a surrogate, a substitute for the thing itself, that allows for reasoning (human and computational) about the “thing”. A knowledge representation may be thought of on a continuum of successive degrees of readability, of ability to reason over, and formalism (e.g., to compute).

In this section we will cover:

• Levels of Representation Framework (degrees of formalism/ computability)
• Tiers of Functionality
• Levels of Representation by Tiers of Functionality
• Knowledge Assets (discrete representations with a purpose)
  • Asset Metadata (information about the assets and knowledge base)
• Knowledge Architecture (designing and defining the types and nature of assets)

Levels of Knowledge Representation

Guideline content moves through levels of representation: narrative (L1), semi-structured (L2), structured and computable (L3), and executable in a real-world system (L4). The levels are a continuum, not rigid categories. See Levels of Knowledge Representation.

Tiers of Functionality

Each level can be broken down into data, logic, and user interface tiers. See Tiers of Functionality and Levels of Representation by Tiers of Functionality.

Knowledge Assets

Knowledge assets (an artifact is an instance of an asset) keep domain logic separate from other system logic. See Knowledge Assets.

Knowledge Architecture

Knowledge architecture defines the types and scopes of assets, their metadata, and how they relate to one another. See Knowledge Architecture.