CN Mobile Logo   'Content Neutrality' and Why It Is Important
for EHR  'Content Neutrality' and Why It Is Important for EHR
Content neutrality is a concept that appears in many contexts.
In law, free-speech cases hinge on whether an ordinance
restricting speech was content-based, depending on what was
said, or if it was content-neutral, limited only in the time,
place, and manner of speaking. Similar distinctions apply to
aspects of the EHR, especially data exchange. In this
discussion, content-based will refer to data formats that
require specific content to be expressed in specific ways and
placed at specific locations. Content-neutral will refer to
formats that define the time, place, and manner in which
information is to be demarcated within a packet of data, but
which impose few or no restrictions on the content itself.  Most
of the things we do with computers correspond to things we have
been doing for years with paper, pencils, cameras, voice
recorders, etc.  The computer provides new and perhaps bett