There are four levels of knowledge representation for clinical practice guidelines (CPGs).
- L1 Narrative: The knowledge is human-readable and in an unstructured format. This knowledge can be used as an input for crafting policies or making decisions. The structure does not allow machines to utilize knowledge.
- L2 Semi-structured: This level has some structure, paving the way for clinical domain experts to interpret. HUMAN READABLE
- L3 Structured: This adds a machine-interpretable structure to the knowledge representation. Knowledge can be shared across settings and systems. There may be subjectivity in knowledge interpretation. COMPUTER READABLE
- L4 Executable: This format enables not only machine-readable knowledge representation, but also machine-executable knowledge representation based on the patient’s clinical context with a specific type of clinical decision support tool. CLINICAL DECISION SUPPORT