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W Pratt

Publications and source records attributed to W Pratt.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1995

A web-based architecture for a medical vocabulary server.

For health care providers to share computing resources and medical application programs across different sites, those applications must share a common medical vocabulary. To construct a common vocabulary, researchers must have an architecture that supports collaborative, networked development. In this paper, we present a web-based server architecture for the collaborative development of a medical vocabulary: a system that provides network services in support of medical applications that need a common, controlled medical terminology. The server supports vocabulary browsing and editing and can respond to direct programmatic queries about vocabulary terms. We have tested the programmatic query-response capability of the vocabulary server with a medical application that determines when patients who have HIV infection may be eligible for certain clinical trials. Our emphasis in this paper is not on the content of the vocabulary, but rather on the communication protocol and the tools that enable collaborative improvement of the vocabulary by any network-connected user.

Computer Communication Networks↗
PubMed1995

Physician's information customizer (PIC): using a shareable user model to filter the medical literature.

The practice of medicine is information-intensive. From reviewing the literature to formulating therapeutic plans, each physician handles information differently. Yet rarely does a representation of the user's information needs and preferences--a user model--get incorporated into information management tools, even though we might reasonably expect better acceptance and effectiveness if the tools' presentation and processing were customized to the user. We developed the Physician's Information Customizer (PIC), which generates a shareable user model that can be used in any medical information-management application. PIC elicits the stable, long-term attributes of a physician through simple questions about her specialty, research focus, areas of interest, patient characteristics (e.g., ages), and practice locale. To show the utility of this user model in customizing a medical informatics application, PIC custom-filters and ranks articles from Medline, using the user model to determine what would be most interesting to the user. Preliminary evaluation on all 99 unselected articles from a recent issue of six prominent medical journals shows that PIC ranks 66% of the articles as the user would. This demonstrates the feasibility of using easily acquired physician attributes to develop a user model that can successfully filter articles of interest from a large undifferentiated collection. Further testing and development is required to optimize the custom filter and to determine which characteristics should be included in the shareable user model and which should be obtained by individual applications.

Algorithms↗
PubMed1994

Surgical planning using three-dimensional imaging and computer modeling.

The acquisition, processing, and use of three-dimensional (3D) imaging provide new insights into normal and abnormal craniofacial anatomy. In this article, characteristics of CT and MRI scanning are reviewed along with the methods used to delineate tissues and produce 3D patient displays, including contouring, shaded surface, and volumetric processing. The use of 3D model fabrication for surgical planning is discussed with examples of the production of a custom CT-based auricle model and the use of rapid prototyping technology to create models for custom alloplastic implant surgery. The review concludes with some speculation about the future of 3D medical imaging as it will influence surgical training and practice over the coming decades.

Diagnostic Imaging↗
PubMed1992

Regional localization of the intestinal mucin gene MUC3 to chromosome 7q22.

The gene MUC3 which codes for a mucin expressed in intestine (Gum et al. 1990) has previously been mapped, using somatic cell hybrids, to chromosome 7. We describe here the regional localization of MUC3 to chromosome 7q22 by in situ hybridization. Preliminary linkage analysis using CEPH (Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humain) families supports this assignment and places MUC3 in the same linkage group as COL1A2 and CFTR.

Amino Acid Sequence↗