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To evaluate the performance of tools for authoring patient database queries.

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) are sponsoring a test to determine the extent to which a combination of existing health-related terminologies covers vocabulary needed in health information systems. The test vocabularies are the 30 that are fully or partially represented in the 1996 edition of the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Metathesaurus, plus three planned additions: the portions of [...]

The World Wide Web is a powerful new way to deliver on-line clinical information, but several problems limit its value to health care professionals: content is highly distributed and difficult to find, clinical information is not separated from non-clinical information, and the current Web technology is unable to support some advanced retrieval capabilities. A system called CliniWeb has been developed to address these problems. CliniWeb is an index to clinical [...]

This case study details the set-up and implementation of the PathNet autocoder (Cerner Corporation) in a busy anatomic pathology laboratory. After initial start-up, procedures were developed to improve the system's performance. Four classes of software coding errors were identified, and an index was developed to measure the number of cases between errors (CBE). Through modifications in the program, the CBE increased sharply by the end of the six-month study period [...]

Some observers feel that the federal government should play a more active leadership role in educating the medical community and in coordinating and encouraging a more rapid and effective implementation of clinically relevant applications of wide-area networking. Other people argue that the private sector is recognizing the importance of these issues and will, when the market demands it, adopt and enhance the telecommunications systems that are needed to produce effective [...]

Patient conditions and events are the core of patient record content. Computer-based records will require standard vocabularies to represent these data consistently, thereby facilitating clinical decision support, research, and efficient care delivery. To address whether existing major coding systems can serve this function, the authors evaluated major clinical classifications for their content coverage.

Electronic medical record systems (EMRSs) currently do not lend themselves easily to cross-institutional clinical care and research. Unique system designs coupled with a lack of standards have led to this difficulty. The authors have designed a preliminary EMRS architecture (W3-EMRS) that exploits the multiplatform, multiprotocol, client-server technology of the World Wide Web. The architecture abstracts the clinical information model and the visual presentation away from the underlying EMRS. As a [...]

To investigate a new approach for query expansion based on retrieval feedback. The first objective in this study was to examine alternative query-expansion methods within the same retrieval-feedback framework. The three alternatives proposed are: expansion on the MeSH query field alone, expansion on the free-text field alone, and expansion on both the MeSH and the free-text fields. The second objective was to gain further understanding of retrieval feedback by examining [...]

To determine whether expert problem-solving strategies can be identified within a large number of student performances of complex medical diagnostic simulations.