W3C

– DRAFT –
FHIR RDF -- Unified Care Model

29 May 2026

Attendees

Present
Brian Handspicker, Brian Hefferen, David Booth, Eric_Jahn, Ken Lord, Natacha Fernandez, Tim_Prudhomme
Regrets
-
Chair
David Booth
Scribe
dbooth

Meeting minutes

Unified Care Model

ken: Working on OWL Unified Care Model (UCM), to be used across care domains.
… Trying to create individual layers of the model, to allow them to be dev independently of others.
… I'm focused on the core model, defining mostly classes, not yet properties.

(Ken shares screen showing class diagram)

ken: Entity class is what SULO calls PhysicalEntity. There are subclasses of that: Person, Device, Organization
… Want the identity of the entities to be separate from the roles they play, because the roles vary across time.

natacha: following a modular design approach?

ken: Yes
… And there are properties between these Entities, such as a person is associated with an Org.
… Can also have SocialCareEntities, such as Community Group, Care Team, Household.
… A person has membership in a social group.
… Also need criteria for each group.

Hefferen: Logic is there.

dbooth: Is it the same group if the membership changes? The answer will affect whether a SocialGroup is a physical entity or a conceptual entity.

ken: Good Q. Please raise that as an issue.

natacha: Pt level groups vs org level group. Is this from the perspective of org providing care?
… There should also be a PatientGroups subclass.

ken: Could have PatientCohort groups. But also other grouping concepts, such as "Herd" of people for vaccination purposes.
… The model needs to support those.

hefferen: The pt is still a role, though they are participating at a different level.

ken: That should also be recorded as an issue that we'll need to be sure the model addresses.
… Any entity could be a subject (role) of an activity.

natacha: Could have support groups?

ken: Yes, the VA does trememdous work on support groups.

Jahn: https://github.com/eric-jahn/ucm-hcls-fhir-rdf/tree/gh-pages/docs/ucm

handspicker: Be careful about fixating too much on the role of "patient" as the focal point of relationships. From a social services perspective a person may be acting in the role of client. From an human services educational perspective the person may be acting in the role of a student. Etc.

ken: Could also have tribal affiliation, and/or medicare, etc.

ken: Need to separate eligibility and enrollment.

hefferen: And terminology in the industry is inconsistent.

ken: Payment gets involved in eligibility and enrollment, on social side.
… Whereas in healthcare, insurance takes care of all of that, outside of the clinical domain.

handspicker: Re membership, is it a person that is a member of a group, or a person-in-a-role who is a member of a group?
… Might want person-role as a standin for person, or practitioner-role as standin for practitioner.

ken: Need capability, when defining a group, to define a range for that group. Need that ability, but haven't gotten into it yet.
… Tribal role may be required to be in a group.

hefferen: Same individual can be viewed differently depending on the role playing.

handspicker: Might also think how this plays out in an ed context, person in student role. That helps us think things through.

handspicker: So is the "person" a member of a group or is it the "person in roleOf" that is the member of a specific type of group... e.g. person in roleOf Medicaid beneficiary that is the member of a Medicaid payee group?
… With regard to "group" and whether the group is the same if members change, consider the "Ship of Theseus" thought experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

dbooth: I normally think of membership as a relation between an entity and a group. Might want to consider the pros/cons of modeling membership as a class vs as a property.

ken: Want to be sure we separate issues, and make it easy for subject matter experts (SMEs) to find what they need.

New W3C Community Group

jahn: Propose that we create a new W3C CG, with its own charter, its own chair, repo, etc.
… Ian Jacobs suggested we create a new CG.

dbooth: Sounds reasonable. Upside is more focus. The only downside I see is you might need to do more to get review and input from the FHIR RDF ontology folks.

jahn: I don't want to lose that aspect. Want that influence.

ken: I think it's essential that UCM is compatible w FHIR.
… Hoping Tim Prudhomme can help do that.

natacha: I'm in support also.

dbooth: It would ease the admin burden also.

handspicker: WRT drinking out of the hose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruces%27_Philosophers_Song

tim: Sounds good to me. The repo that FHIR RDF uses, but the outcome is what's in the FHIR spec.
… One nice thing about FHIR is that you can easily validate any FHIR data you have. Easy to know that you are conformant.

jahn: There's a form for creating the CG.

AGREED: Create a new CG for Unified Care Model

ACTION: Eric Jahn to fill out the W3C form to create a UCM CG

jahn: Please comment in the design principles doc.

My W3C user name is dbooth.

jahn: https://w3.org/community/groups/propose_cg/
https://github.com/eric-jahn/ucm-hcls-fhir-rdf/blob/gh-pages/docs/ucm/ucm-design-principles.docx

ADJOURNED

Summary of action items

  1. Eric Jahn to fill out the W3C form to create a UCM CG
Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 248 (Mon Oct 27 20:04:16 2025 UTC).

Diagnostics

Succeeded: s/approach/approach?/

No scribenick or scribe found. Guessed: dbooth

Maybe present: AGREED, dbooth, handspicker, Hefferen, Jahn, ken, natacha, tim

All speakers: AGREED, dbooth, handspicker, Hefferen, Jahn, ken, natacha, tim

Active on IRC: dbooth