Knowledge representation in digital medical documents for efficient information access and retrieval.
Information access and retrieval are essential to serve the delivery and application of evidence-based medicine. The literature provides evidence for the effectiveness of computerization of medical knowledge for increasing compliance with current standards and improving patient outcomes. But all efforts in implementing knowledge-based functions remain limited in respect of either the prolonged exposure to live clinical use, the complexity of knowledge content supported, the dependencies on a technology platform and host system, or the proof of use and content sharing across multiple and varying environments. We have to face currently an information overload, especially in medicine. As a result, efficient ways of implementation of evidence-based care become more and more important. Most of the medical knowledge contained in textbooks, guidelines, journals as well as online resources is text-based. In order to present problem-specific information at the point of care the outlined concept relies on a document-based solution with the eXtensible Markup Language (XML). The adoption of XML as a standard for the publication and interchange of documents creates a great opportunity for better information retrieval. On the basis of structured data we are able to improve the search quality for clinical information which forms a crucial pre-requisite for the implementation of evidence-based care.