Temporal Class

Time plays a crucial role in many data analytic exercises, especially in health care. A patient disease status changes over time, a certain event should happen within some span of time relative to another event, a period of membership must be some minimum length before the patient is qualified to be included in a program, etc.

Consequently, there are a lot of features in Ursa Studio to implement logic related to time. One foundational concept is an object's Temporal Class. That is, whether the object should be treated as an Entity, Event, or Interval.

Temporal Class: Entity

A temporal class category denoting that an object’s observations do not represent a moment in time or a period of time. Rather, these objects, for analytical purposes, are considered to have a continuous presence. For example, an object capturing information about a patient would have an entity temporal class.

Temporal Class: Event

A temporal class category denoting that an object’s observations represent a moment in time. For example, an object capturing information about clinician office visits would generally have an event temporal class.

Temporal Class: Interval

A temporal class category denoting that an object’s observations represent a period of time with a start and end date. For example, an object capturing information about a home health episode of care that starts on a date and ends 60 days later would have an interval temporal class.

Interval objects will allow users to signal if the object is a timeline or not. Records in a timeline object are intervals that must be non-overlapping within an entity, such as a patient.