Abstract
The data of a patient undergoing complex diagnostic and therapeutic procedures do
not only form a simple chronology of events, but are closely related in many ways.
Such data contexts include causal or temporal relationships, they express inconsistencies
and revision processes, or describe patient-specific heuristics. The knowledge of
data contexts supports the retrospective understanding of the medical decision-making
process and is a valuable base for further treatment. Conventional data models usually
neglect the problem of context knowledge, or simply use free text which is not processed
by the program. In connection with the development of the knowledge-based system THEMPO
(Therapy Management in Pediatric Oncology), which supports therapy and monitoring
in pediatric oncology, a graph-grammar approach has been used to design and implement
a graph-oriented patient model which allows the representation of non-trivial (causal,
temporal, etc.) clinical contexts. For context acquisition a mouse-based tool has
been developed allowing the physician to specify contexts in a comfortable graphical
manner. Furthermore, the retrieval of contexts is realized with graphical tools as
well.
Keywords
Electronic Patient Record - Decision Support - Context Representation - Graph-Grammars
- Graphical Acquisition and Retrieval
