Considerations for a Universal Exchange Language for healthcare

The US Government has called for a Universal Exchange Language for healthcare. This may be an opportunity to start from fundamental principles to deliver medical information in a uniform way that many stakeholders in the use of the system, not just programmers, IT architects, and standards organizations, but physicians, public health analysts, epidemiologists, and clinical decision support system designers, would like. To be truly universal, several aspects of a consistent formalism need to be considered. Some of these with examples are provided here.