TCD-CS-93-16 Nangle, B. & Keane, M. T.
Effective Retrieval in Hospital Information Systems.
September 1993.
Abstract
With the development of large-scale storage of records in Hospital
Information Systems we are faced with new challenges in accessing
and retrieving information in a flexible and efficient manner. In this
paper, we argue that adequate information retrieval in such systems
will have to rely on the exploitation of the conceptual knowledge in
those records rather than superficial string searches. However, this
course of action is dependent on the development of natural
language processing techniques and on retrieval systems that can
exploit semantic/conceptual knowledge.
We present a retrieval system, which attempts to realise the latter of
these developments. This system, called CONIR* operates in the
domain of patient Discharge Summaries on coronary illness. CONIR
uses flexible retrieval techniques over a database of records that are
represented in a deep conceptual fashion. In the course of the paper
we outline the sorts of knowledge structures that are required to do
this type of retrieval and indicate how they are constructed. This
system, called CONIR, has been developed as part of the EC-Funded
AIM initiative.
Keywords
Patient Discharge Summaries, Coronary Illness, Hospital Information
Systems, Knowledge Representation, Conceptual Graphs, Temporal
Discourse Structure, Conceptual Context Description, Information
Retrieval.
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