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Biomedical subjects

Christel Le Bozec

Publications and source records attributed to Christel Le Bozec.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

Specifications and implementation of a new exchange format to support computerized consensus in pathology.

In the pathology domain, consensus sessions around multi-headed microscopes enhance reproducibility and can reduce inter- and intra-observer variability. Computerized tools and Web technology could facilitate the organization of consensus sessions and assist pathologists to agree on features that are relevant to diagnosis. In the context of the IDEM project, whose aim is to achieve a computerized platform to allow pathologists to derive consensual diagnostic during Internet-based collaborative sessions, we propose a new extension of the existing TELESLIDE format. This new extended format enables the storage and the exchange of multi-experts descriptions that will be processed by the IDEM consensus engine to produce consensual descriptions. We describe this new format and its implementation in the IDEM teleconsensus platform.

Consensus↗

The HEGP component-based clinical information system.

OBJECTIVES: The opening of the Georges Pompidou University Hospital (HEGP) in southwest Paris from the merging of three aging facilities was the opportunity to conceive and deploy a brand new clinical information system (CIS) based on a component-based approach. This paper describes the process of selection of the business components, the main functions currently in use, and the technical infrastructure that proved necessary. METHODS: The HEGP CIS features generic and healthcare-related components. The generic components include a reference manager, a security manager, a document manager, a Corba bus, and various mediation and supervision tools. The healthcare-related components include the patient, healthcare record, act management, and resource scheduler components. RESULTS: Major functions of CIS were operational at the opening of the hospital in July 2000. Two years later, the unique patient record and the provider order entry system were used in 96% of the concerned healthcare units. Sixty-five percent of the biological orders and 55% of the imaging orders were directly entered by the physicians. Access to investigation results including on-line availability of images is used by physicians in 100% of the units. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: A component-based approach was found to be high-performing and cost-effective for the design and deployment of HEGP CIS.

Hospital Information Systems↗

A collaborative platform for consensus sessions in pathology over Internet.

The design of valid databases in pathology faces the problem of diagnostic disagreement between pathologists. Organizing consensus sessions between experts to reduce the variability is a difficult task. The TRIDEM platform addresses the issue to organize consensus sessions in pathology over the Internet. In this paper, we present the basis to achieve such collaborative platform. On the one hand, the platform integrates the functionalities of the IDEM consensus module that alleviates the consensus task by presenting to pathologists preliminary computed consensus through ergonomic interfaces (automatic step). On the other hand, a set of lightweight interaction tools such as vocal annotations are implemented to ease the communication between experts as they discuss a case (interactive step). The architecture of the TRIDEM platform is based on a Java-Server-Page web server that communicate with the ObjectStore PSE/PRO database used for the object storage. The HTML pages generated by the web server run Java applets to perform the different steps (automatic and interactive) of the consensus. The current limitations of the platform is to only handle a synchronous process. Moreover, improvements like re-writing the consensus workflow with a protocol such as BPML are already forecast.

Computer Systems↗

New terminology services based on term comparison using semantic definitions and similarity computation.

As medical information can be encoded within different terminological systems, terms comparison is an important issue to allow communication between applications. In description logics, terms are compared by the means of semantic definitions and subsumption relations. Similarity is also a convenient method for term comparison but is not supported by terminology servers which implement subsumption relations. We present new terminology services built on a semantic distance that could help for semantic mediation between medical applications ranging from semi-automatic encoders to data mining tools. These services are 1) comparison between terms 2) k-nearest-neighbors 3) support for concept coding 4) automatic generation of similarity tables 5) distance based queries 6) support for clustering.

Artificial Intelligence↗

A customizable similarity measure between histological cases.

IDEM, a computerized environment dedicated to pathologists, includes a Case Based Reasoning (CBR) procedure to retrieve similar histological cases in the database. The relevancy of a retrieved case strongly depends on the similarity measure comparing case descriptions. The present work deals with the definition of a similarity measure in the context of IDEM. In a first step, a theoretical measure (relational, numerical and informed), based on the domain constraints, was selected. In a second step, the theoretical measure is optimized according to the current case base. Results are presented for a database of 53 cases of breast tumors. The contribution of this work is to give to pathologists an interactive environment that optimizes the similarity measure between histological cases. This work is also a contribution to the CBR cycle life since the similarity measure can be adapted while new cases are added to the base.

Artificial Intelligence↗