Using a Java Dynamic Tree to Manage the Terminology in a Suite of Medical Applications

2008 ◽  
Vol 47 (06) ◽  
pp. 499-504
Author(s):  
M.W. Evens ◽  
D. A. Trace ◽  
K. Yang

Summary Objectives: Now that the National Library of Medicine has made SNOMED-CT widely available, we are trying to manage the terminology of a whole suite of medical applications and map our terminology into that in SNOMED. Methods: This paper describes the design and implementation of the Java Dynamic Tree that provides structure to our medical terminology and explains how it functions as the core of our system. Results: The tree was designed to reflect the stages in a patient interview, so it contains components for identifying the patient and the provider, a large set of chief complaints, review of systems, physical examination, several history modules, medications, laboratory tests, imaging, and special procedures. The tree is mirrored in a commercial DBMS, which also stores multi-encounter patient data, disorder patterns for our Bayesian diagnostic system, and the data and rules for other expert systems. The DBMS facilitates the import and export of large terminology files. Conclusions: Our Java Dynamic Tree allows the health care provider to view the entire terminology along with the structure that supports it, as well as the mechanism for the generation of progress notes and other documents, in terms of a single hierarchical structure. Changes in terminology can be propagated through the system under the control of the expert. The import/ export facility has been a major help by replacing our original terminology by the terminology in SNOMED-CT.

Terminology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-34
Author(s):  
Maria-Cornelia Wermuth

Abstract This paper deals with collaborative terminological activities in the biomedical field. Efficient communication based on uniform language use is a prerequisite for safe and cost-efficient patient care. Terminological consistency and standardization are therefore central issues in healthcare with high societal relevance. The objectives of this contribution are (1) to show how actors from different disciplines and institutions are involved in the standardization of medical terminology and electronic terminology systems; (2) to describe how translation-oriented terminological principles affect the translation of the Systematic Nomenclature of Medicine – Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT). The challenges of this approach will be discussed and some suggestions for its further development will be made.


1995 ◽  
Vol 34 (01/02) ◽  
pp. 85-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. A. Musen ◽  
K. E. Wieckert ◽  
E. T. Miller ◽  
K. E. Campbell ◽  
L. M. Fagan

Abstract:The creation of controlled medical terminologies is a central challenge in the development of electronic patient records. In the T-HELPER patient-record system, designed for the care of patients with HIV diease, the IVORY module allows health-care workers to compose textual progress notes by making selections from menus generated automatically from a controlled medical terminology. Construction of this IVORY terminology required extensive design sessions with a team of computer scientists and an expert physician. Refinement of the terminology was only possible when the design team could envision how the completed T-HELPER system would be used in the context of clinical practice. Development of controlled medical terminologies is a significant problem in knowledge acquisition. Techniques used to acquire and represent clinical concepts for the purpose of building decision-support systems also are appropriate for the construction of controlled terminologies such as the one in T-HELPER.


2000 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 154-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathrine Mihalopoulos ◽  
Patrick McGorry ◽  
Susan Roberts ◽  
Colleen McFarlane

Objective: Deriving diagnoses from retrospective case note examination is a common practice in psychiatric research. The Operational Criteria (OPCRIT) diagnostic checklist is essentially a checklist built up of operational criteria defined by a comprehensive glossary and is designed to assign reliable diagnoses from case notes. However, the validity of such a procedure compared with procedures involving prospective assessment has never been tested. We examined the procedural validity of the OPCRIT diagnostic system in relation to four other diagnostic procedures mostly employing prospectively gathered information. Method: Three experienced psychopathology raters rated the case notes and clinical abstracts, using the OPCRIT method of diagnostic assignment, of 50 subjects who had participated in an early procedural validity study as an adjunct to the DSM-IV Field Trial for psychotic disorders. The setting was the Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre (EPPIC), which focuses on first episode psychosis. Results: The pairwise concordance with the other procedures for DSM-III-R diagnoses assigned by OPCRIT using ratings derived from either the clinical abstracts or the case notes was found to be only poor to moderate when compared with the pairwise concordance of the four other procedures. The per cent agreement between OPCRIT clinical abstracts diagnoses and the other procedures ranged from 49% to 60% with kappa values between 0.30 and 0.45, and for OPCRIT case note diagnoses and the other procedures the per cent agreement range was between 44% and 57% and the kappa values were between 0.35 and 0.49. Conclusions: The procedural validity of diagnoses assigned via the application of checklists of operational criteria to case notes and clinical abstracts alone is unacceptably poor. Such sources need to be buttressed by other data, particularly direct patient interview and informant material.


2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 794-801 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brett Trusko ◽  
S. Trent Rosenbloom ◽  
Diane Montella ◽  
James C. Jackson ◽  
Fern Fitzhenry ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Attila Koppány

The successful diagnostic activity has an important role in the changes of the repair costs and the efficient elimination of the damages. The aim of the general building diagnostics is to determine the various visible or instrumentally observable alterations, to qualify the constructions from the suitability and personal safety (accidence) points of view. Our diagnostic system is primarily based on a visual examination on the spot, its method is suitable for the examination of almost all important structures and structure changes of the buildings. During the operation of the diagnostic system a large number of data–valuable for the professional practice–was collected and will be collected also in the future, the analysis of which data set is specially suitable for revaluing construction and the practical application of the experiences later during the building maintenance and reconstruction work. For using the system a so-called “morphological box” has been created, that contains the hierarchic system of constructions, which is connected with the construction components’ thesaurus appointed by the correct structure codes of these constructions’ place in the hierarchy. The thesaurus was not only necessary because of the easy surveillance of the system, but to exclude the usage of structure-name synonyms in the interest of unified handling. The analysis of which data set is specially suitable for revaluing earlier built constructions and can help to create knowledge based new constructions for the future.


Author(s):  
Vinayak P. Dravid ◽  
M.R. Notis ◽  
C.E. Lyman

The concept of interfacial width is often invoked in many materials science phenomena which relate to the structure and properties of internal interfaces. The numerical value of interface width is an important input parameter in diffusion equations, sintering theories as well as in many electronic devices/processes. Most often, however, this value is guessed rather than determined or even estimated. In this paper we present a method of determining the effective structural and electronic- structural width of interphase interfaces using low- and core loss fine structure effects in EELS spectra.The specimens used in the study were directionally solidified eutectics (DSEs) in the system; NiO-ZrO2(CaO), NiO-Y2O3 and MnO-ZrO2(ss). EELS experiments were carried out using a VG HB-501 FE STEM and a Hitachi HF-2000 FE TEM.


Author(s):  
Xudong Weng ◽  
O.F. Sankey ◽  
Peter Rez

Single electron band structure techniques have been applied successfully to the interpretation of the near edge structures of metals and other materials. Among various band theories, the linear combination of atomic orbital (LCAO) method is especially simple and interpretable. The commonly used empirical LCAO method is mainly an interpolation method, where the energies and wave functions of atomic orbitals are adjusted in order to fit experimental or more accurately determined electron states. To achieve better accuracy, the size of calculation has to be expanded, for example, to include excited states and more-distant-neighboring atoms. This tends to sacrifice the simplicity and interpretability of the method.In this paper. we adopt an ab initio scheme which incorporates the conceptual advantage of the LCAO method with the accuracy of ab initio pseudopotential calculations. The so called pscudo-atomic-orbitals (PAO's), computed from a free atom within the local-density approximation and the pseudopotential approximation, are used as the basis of expansion, replacing the usually very large set of plane waves in the conventional pseudopotential method. These PAO's however, do not consist of a rigorously complete set of orthonormal states.


Author(s):  
Michael schatz ◽  
Joachim Jäger ◽  
Marin van Heel

Lumbricus terrestris erythrocruorin is a giant oxygen-transporting macromolecule in the blood of the common earth worm (worm "hemoglobin"). In our current study, we use specimens (kindly provided by Drs W.E. Royer and W.A. Hendrickson) embedded in vitreous ice (1) to avoid artefacts encountered with the negative stain preparation technigue used in previous studies (2-4).Although the molecular structure is well preserved in vitreous ice, the low contrast and high noise level in the micrographs represent a serious problem in image interpretation. Moreover, the molecules can exhibit many different orientations relative to the object plane of the microscope in this type of preparation. Existing techniques of analysis requiring alignment of the molecular views relative to one or more reference images often thus yield unsatisfactory results.We use a new method in which first rotation-, translation- and mirror invariant functions (5) are derived from the large set of input images, which functions are subsequently classified automatically using multivariate statistical techniques (6). The different molecular views in the data set can therewith be found unbiasedly (5). Within each class, all images are aligned relative to that member of the class which contributes least to the classes′ internal variance (6). This reference image is thus the most typical member of the class. Finally the aligned images from each class are averaged resulting in molecular views with enhanced statistical resolution.


Author(s):  
K. Fukushima ◽  
N. Kohyama ◽  
A. Fukami

A film-sealed high resolution environmental cell(E.C) for observing hydrated materials had been developed by us(l). Main specification of the E.C. is as follows: 1) Accelerated voltage; 100 kV. 2) Gas in the E.C.; saturated water vapour with carrier gas of 50 Torr. 3) Thickness of gas layer; 50 μm. 4) Sealing film; evaporated carbon film(20 nm thick) with plastic microgrid. 5) Resolving power; 1 nm. 6) Transmittance of electron beam; 60% at 100 kV. The E.C. had been successfully applied to the study of hydrated halloysite(2) (3). Kaolin minerals have no interlayer water and are basically non-expandable but form intercalation compounds with some specific chemicals such as hydrazine, formamide and etc. Because of these compounds being mostly changed in vacuum, we tried to reveal the structure changes between in wet air and in vacuum of kaolin minerals intercalated with hydrazine and of hydrated state of montmori1lonite using the E.C. developed by us.


2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Lorne Direnfeld ◽  
David B. Torrey ◽  
Jim Black ◽  
LuAnn Haley ◽  
Christopher R. Brigham

Abstract When an individual falls due to a nonwork-related episode of dizziness, hits their head and sustains injury, do workers’ compensation laws consider such injuries to be compensable? Bearing in mind that each state makes its own laws, the answer depends on what caused the loss of consciousness, and the second asks specifically what happened in the fall that caused the injury? The first question speaks to medical causation, which applies scientific analysis to determine the cause of the problem. The second question addresses legal causation: Under what factual circumstances are injuries of this type potentially covered under the law? Much nuance attends this analysis. The authors discuss idiopathic falls, which in this context means “unique to the individual” as opposed to “of unknown cause,” which is the familiar medical terminology. The article presents three detailed case studies that describe falls that had their genesis in episodes of loss of consciousness, followed by analyses by lawyer or judge authors who address the issue of compensability, including three scenarios from Arizona, California, and Pennsylvania. A medical (scientific) analysis must be thorough and must determine the facts regarding the fall and what occurred: Was the fall due to a fit (eg, a seizure with loss of consciousness attributable to anormal brain electrical activity) or a faint (eg, loss of consciousness attributable to a decrease in blood flow to the brain? The evaluator should be able to fully explain the basis for the conclusions, including references to current science.


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