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Biomedical subjects

J Ingenerf

Publications and source records attributed to J Ingenerf.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Standardized terminological services enabling semantic interoperability between distributed and heterogeneous systems.

The interconnection of heterogeneous computer applications in medicine raises the issue of semantic interoperability, going beyond traditional approaches of terminological standardization in basically three aspects. First, the variety of medical vocabularies that currently coexist in different domains is a major barrier for the integration of autonomously developed applications. Fortunately, with the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) there are machine-readable terminological sources that cover and integrate most of the existing medical vocabularies. Second, the exchanged data need to be processed by a machine for different purposes like patient data integration, access to literature and knowledge bases as well as clinical audit and research. Medical vocabularies provided as passive dictionaries are no longer sufficient. Software system developers should take advantage of terminological services for refining user queries, for mapping the user's terms to appropriate medical vocabularies etc. Third, the services should be accessible uniformly and transparently. In the CORBAmed initiative a proposal for a standardized interface for querying and accessing computerized medical terminology resources was created. Based on the mentioned principles the MUSTANG system (Medical UMLS based Terminology Server for Authoring, Navigating and Guiding the Retrieval to Heterogeneous Knowledge Sources) has been developed. It is implemented on a Windows NT platform using the ORACLE database management and development software. The terminological services are accessible via multiple interfaces. The MUSTANG-System and the experiences with using terminological services in practice are described. Opposed to other levels of standardization like syntactical message standards there is much more a hesitation in the use of standardized terminology.

Humans↗
PubMed1999

Telemedicine and terminology: different needs of context information.

Traditionally, communication between healthcare providers, including the provision of physicians with information and knowledge, works quite well because there are implicitly common conventions and assumptions in the collaboration of all involved actors. The basic prerequisite of the communication process between humans is a mutual agreement on syntax and semantics of oral and written language, i.e., of the medical sublanguage. With telemedicine, i.e., the use of telecommunication and informatics in medicine, this prerequisite is no longer sufficient. First, various professionals from different clinical communities, characterized by specialty, nationality, school, etc., share the management of the patient's health. Second, electronically communicated information is more and more intended for processing by computer applications rather than for direct interpretation by human users. Third, the interconnection of distributed heterogeneous software systems in medicine raises the issue of semantic interoperability, especially the problem of data integration. A faithful communication in such a scenario must be based on explicit assumptions "behind" a message. Interpreting an usually highly context-dependent utterance demands for mechanisms on a pragmatic level in natural language processing. The need for additional processing and integration of the transferred data by the receiving system demands for standardization and mediation, taking into consideration contextual knowledge that cannot entirely be explained and processed with linguistic and terminological approaches. This paper describes different categories of contexts and also different needs of applications concerning "context awareness."

Telemedicine↗
PubMed1998

Concept-oriented standardization and statistics-oriented classification: continuing the classification versus nomenclature controversy.

Nowadays, most activities on controlled medical vocabularies focus on the provision of a sufficient atomic-level granularity for representing clinical data. Amongst others, clinical vocabularies should be concept oriented, compositional and should also reject "Not Elsewhere Classified". We strongly share the opinion that there is a need to deal with serious deficits of existing manually created vocabularies and with new demands for computer-based advanced processing and exchange of medical language data. However, we do not share the opinion that methodological requirements like observational and structural comparability needed for sound statistics should not be included in desiderata of controlled medical vocabularies. Statistical-oriented classifications are not developed for representing detailed clinical data but for providing purpose-dependent classes where cases of interest are assigned uniquely. Either statistical classifications are not included into the set of controlled medical vocabularies in the sense of Cimino, or his desiderata are misleading. We argue that statistical classifications should be linked to (formal) concept systems, but again this linkage does not change their different natures. With this article we continue the "classification versus nomenclature" controversy referring to Coté.

Data Interpretation, Statistical↗
PubMed1997

SAM: speech-aware applications in medicine to support structured data entry.

In the last two years, improvement in speech recognition technology has directed the medical community's interest to porting and using such innovations in clinical systems. The acceptance of speech recognition systems in clinical domains increases with recognition speed, large medical vocabulary, high accuracy, continuous speech recognition, and speaker independence. Although some commercial speech engines approach these requirements, the greatest benefit can be achieved in adapting a speech recognizer to a specific medical application. The goals of our work are first, to develop a speech-aware core component which is able to establish connections to speech recognition engines of different vendors. This is realized in SAM. Second, with applications based on SAM we want to support the physician in his/her routine clinical care activities. Within the STAMP project (STAndardized Multimedia report generator in Pathology), we extend SAM by combining a structured data entry approach with speech recognition technology. Another speech-aware application in the field of Diabetes care is connected to a terminology server. The server delivers a controlled vocabulary which can be used for speech recognition.

Cell Biology↗
PubMed1995

Taxonomic vocabularies in medicine: the intention of usage determines different established structures.

This paper deals with the reasons for distinguishing taxonomic vocabularies for standardizing terminology according to their different dedicated purposes. Different kinds of vocabularies are defined and then characterized using criteria like purposes, semiotic bases, principles for establishing hierarchical relations, mechanisms for guaranteeing reproducibility, and underlying representation formats. Furthermore, the kinds of taxonomic vocabularies worked out so far are named by preferred terms and assigned to proper places within the whole context of medical routine and research. Finally, it is argued that there must be a careful distinction between a conceptual level on one hand and a purpose-dependent non-conceptual level on the other. Unfortunately, both levels are crucially intertwined in existing vocabularies. Efforts on conceptually linking the vocabularies can help to share and re-use information evolving from different sources due to their common conceptual core. However, one must be aware of the effects resulting from special structural features on a non-conceptual level.

Vocabulary, Controlled↗