<title>Model for universal digital data format (UDDF) for medical applications</title>

Abstract

Medicine employs a wide variety of digital data in various formats for clinical and research activities. To make medical data available for all users and equipment, it must be stored in a general format that is understandable by all end users. Also data must be structured so that it can be retrieved, manipulated, and stored efficiently. In this article, we propose a paradigm for representation of digital data such that it encompasses various modes of medical data without imposing demanding compliance requirements. Also the distributed nature of the proposed data format allows efficient data storage/transmission through use of a hierarchical data servers. Such a distributed data format provides not only a universal and uniform means of data storage/communication but also a valuable resource for medical research and public health planning.