Syndrome Definitions

Ken asked...

So in a distributed system doesn't it make sense that these definitions
should be regionally (and/or organizationally) defined and maintained? A
truly distributed system should be able to handle this. Am I crazy?

Brian answered...

No, you're not crazy. This is actually the combination of the
distributed query use case with the distributed computing use case.
Because in order to get a valid aggregate view of combined regions you
will need to use distributed computing to reclassify syndromes using a
shared definition.

For now, we are assuming a shared definition (i.e. only using RODS nodes
for the distributed query). The next stage is to keep a registry of how
syndromes are classified (like the Stanford ontology registry) and query
based on systems that match particular classification schemes. The end
goal is to be able to send out classification algorithms and get a
single response back with each syndrome count classified in the same
manner.