Structuring narrative information via metadata: a case of clinical narratives.

The goal of the current work is to improve and assess the existing metadata for clinical narrative information. The metadata schema for clinical narrative information borrows from the domain of narrative information and clinical narration. The elements corresponding to the narrative information were from the elements of narration, narrative theories and entities in the ontology-based narrative models. The elements of clinical narration are identified from the patient stories. This study found that the narrative in general and medical narratives in specific lack a metadata schema. The work developed a metadata framework for medical narrative information. Following the development of this framework, an evaluation by experts was conducted through the Delphi method.