00624
Factors that may Affect the Observation
2014-11-02
Definition: This field contains the text description of the foods, diagnoses, drugs, or other conditions that may influence the interpretation of the observation. Information about the direction of the effect, and any recommendation about altering the diet, conditions, or drug before initiating the test observation.
Most rules about factors that effect the test interpretation will be transmitted as free text. In such cases, the contents serve only as information for human reading. However, an alternative for machine readable rules also exists. The rule may be defined formally in the Arden Syntax (ASTM 1460-1992) which has syntax for defining algebraic and transcendental equations, as well as temporal and logical selection criteria based on patient information stored in the computer record. Rules about patient preparation are written in Arden Syntax and should begin and end with a double semi-colon (;;), the Arden slot delimiter.