Biomedical subjects

Alon Hessing

Publications and source records attributed to Alon Hessing.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

A framework for a distributed, hybrid, multiple-ontology clinical-guideline library, and automated guideline-support tools.

Clinical guidelines are a major tool in improving the quality of medical care. However, most guidelines are in free text, not in a formal, executable format, and are not easily accessible to clinicians at the point of care. We introduce a Web-based, modular, distributed architecture, the Digital Electronic Guideline Library (DeGeL), which facilitates gradual conversion of clinical guidelines from text to a formal representation in chosen target guideline ontology. The architecture supports guideline classification, semantic markup, context-sensitive search, browsing, run-time application, and retrospective quality assessment. The DeGeL hybrid meta-ontology includes elements common to all guideline ontologies, such as semantic classification and domain knowledge; it also includes four content-representation formats: free text, semi-structured text, semi-formal representation, and a formal representation. These formats support increasingly sophisticated computational tasks. The DeGeL tools for support of guideline-based care operate, at some level, on all guideline ontologies. We have demonstrated the feasibility of the architecture and the tools for several guideline ontologies, including Asbru and GEM.

Computer Communication Networks↗

PubMed2004

Vaidurya--a concept-based, context-sensitive search engine for clinical guidelines.

A major problem in the effective use of clinical guidelines is fast and accurate access at the point of care. Thus, we are developing a digital electronic guideline library (DeGeL) and a set of tools for incremental conversion of free-text guide-lines into increasingly machine-comprehensible representations, which support automated application. Even if guidelines are represented in electronic fashion, care providers need to be able to quickly retrieve the guidelines that best fit the clinical situation at hand. We describe Vaidurya, a search and retrieval engine that exploits the hybrid nature of guideline representation in the DeGeL architecture. Vaidurya can use not only free-text keywords, but also multiple semantic indices along which the guidelines are classified, and the mark up of guidelines in DeGeL, using the semantic roles of one or more guideline-representation languages. Preliminary evaluation of Vaidurya in a standard information task and a large guide-line repository is encouraging; formal evaluation is under way.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2004

The Digital electronic Guideline Library (DeGeL): a hybrid framework for representation and use of clinical guidelines.

We propose to present a poster (and potentially also a demonstration of the implemented system) summarizing the current state of our work on a hybrid, multiple-format representation of clinical guidelines that facilitates conversion of guidelines from free text to a formal representation. We describe a distributed Web-based architecture (DeGeL) and a set of tools using the hybrid representation. The tools enable performing tasks such as guideline specification, semantic markup, search, retrieval, visualization, eligibility determination, runtime application and retrospective quality assessment. The representation includes four parallel formats: Free text (one or more original sources); semistructured text (labeled by the target guideline-ontology semantic labels); semiformal text (which includes some control specification); and a formal, machine-executable representation. The specification, indexing, search, retrieval, and browsing tools are essentially independent of the ontology chosen for guideline representation, but editing the semi-formal and formal formats requires ontology-specific tools, which we have developed in the case of the Asbru guideline-specification language. The four formats support increasingly sophisticated computational tasks. The hybrid guidelines are stored in a Web-based library. All tools, such as for runtime guideline application or retrospective quality assessment, are designed to operate on all representations. We demonstrate the hybrid framework by providing examples from the semantic markup and search tools.

Artificial Intelligence↗