本文件规定了健康信息学中明确表示时间相关表达所需的一组表征原语和语义关系。本文档不引入或强制使用特定的时间本体，也不强制使用此类本体的固定表示方案。相反，本文件为句法和语义表示提供了一套原则，允许特定本体在时间上的可比性，以及明确表达的时间相关信息的交换。 本文件既适用于现实世界中发生的实际现象的描述（如病历登记），也适用于概念的描述（如医学知识库）。 本文件适用于 a） 医疗信息系统的开发人员，可能需要为内部组织提供明确的时间相关概念（例如时态数据库、时态推理系统）， b） 信息建模师或知识工程师为a）中提到的系统建立模型， c） 参与制定医疗保健精确子域语义标准的专家- 需要涵盖相关信息（例如，在病理年代学研究中，即处理特定疾病时间进程的学科），以及 d） 开发嵌入时间相关信息的消息交换格式。 本文件不打算直接用于 -代表时间上的真实， -关于时间的推理，或者 -计量时间的表示。

This document specifies a set of representational primitives and semantic relations needed for an unambiguous representation of explicit time-related expressions in health informatics. This document does not introduce or force a specific ontology of time, nor does it force the use of a fixed representation scheme for such an ontology. Rather this document provides a set of principles for syntactic and semantic representation that allow the comparability of specific ontologies on time, and the exchange of time-related information that is expressed explicitly. This document applies to both the representation of actual phenomena occurring in the real world (e.g. registrations in medical records) and to the description of concepts (e.g. medical knowledge bases). This document is applicable to a) developers of medical information systems where there might be a need for explicit time-related concepts for internal organization (e.g. temporal data bases, temporal reasoning systems), b) information modellers or knowledge engineers building models for the systems mentioned in a), c) experts involved in the development of semantic standards on precise subdomains in health care where time-related information needs to be covered, (e.g. in the study of pathochronology, i.e. the discipline dealing with the time course of specific diseases), and d) developers of interchange formats for messages in which time-related information is embedded. This document is not intended to be used directly for — representing what is true in time, — reasoning about time, or — representation of metrological time.