Current research and future directions in pattern identification: Results of an international symposium / 中国结合医学杂志

A symposium on pattern identification (PI) was held at the Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine (KIOM) on October 2, 2013, in Daejeon, South Korea. This symposium was convened to provide information on the current research in PI as well as suggest future research directions. The participants discussed the nature of PI, possible research questions, strategies and future international collaborations in pattern research. With eight presentations and an extensive panel discussion, the symposium allowed participants to discuss research methods in traditional medicine for PI. One speaker presented the topic, 'Clinical pattern differentiation and contemporary research in PI.' Two speakers presented current trends in research on blood stasis while the remaining five other delegates discussed the research methods and future directions of PI research. The participants engaged in in-depth discussions regarding the nature of PI, potential research questions, strategies and future international collaborations in pattern research.

A study of Knowledge Modeling using abstract concepts in Traditional East Asian Medicine / 대한의료정보학회지

OBJECTIVE: This research is focused on modeling the diagnostic knowledge in traditional medicine. Unlike the previous studies which have dealt mainly with the standardized heuristic knowledge for diagnosis, we investigated the logical procedures and a set of source knowledge which the standardized diagnosis has been based on. These procedures and knowledge are related to Yin-Yang principle and their medical derivatives which are believed to interact with the heuristic knowledge for diagnosis through analogical reasoning. METHOD: we analyzed disorders which have been specified in traditional medicine and their signs and symptoms on the diagnostic criteria defined by Korean Institute of Oriental Medicine. Based on the conventional knowledge, all the symptoms were analyzed into elementary abstractive concepts so that we represented their properties by the principles mentioned above. And then we analyzed the procedures to link the disorders to their assigned sign and symptoms. RESULTS: Based on the proposed methodology, the diagnostic knowledge in traditional medicine was represented as rules in our ontology which was written by OpenCyc system. By applying these rules to the properties of the symptoms that have been derived from a patient, the patient's disorder can be determined. And this preliminary algorithm was implemented to be able to obtain a limited diagnostic result for individual patients. CONCLUSION: This research developed an analytic and consequently flexible diagnostic knowledge system for traditional medicine than the previous studies. These results will be extended to developing an analogical reasoning algorithm by the authors. It is also necessary, however, to improve them both by providing more practical diagnostic knowledge in such medicine and by carrying out clinical evaluations.

Development of Standardized and Competency-Based Curriculum in Nursing Informatics / 대한의료정보학회지

OBJECTIVE: The purposes of this study were to analyze the current status of nursing informatics course and to develop the standardized curriculum in nursing informatics course based on competency. METHODS: Data were collected through two phases. In the first phase, a survey was conducted on 115 nursing institutions to analyze the current status of nursing informatics course. In the second phase, two-round delphi technique was developed to determine the priority and relative weight of contents in nursing informatics course. Final samples composed of both 43 nursing institutions and 11 nursing informatics experts. RESULTS: Out of 43 nursing schools, 13 nursing schools offered nursing informatics course. Nursing informatics was taught mostly to the second year and had 2 credits. About 54% of respondents disagreed that nursing informatics should be included in the license examination for Registered Nurse. The subject matrix by priority and relative weight and a standardized curriculum for nursing informatics were developed. CONCLUSION: Continuous application and revision of nursing informatics curriculum should be needed.

Development Environment for Automatic Generation of Clinical Data Acquisition System / 대한의료정보학회지

OBJECTIVE: This paper discusses the development environment that automatically generates software intended to execute arbitrarily defined functions. Software that we develop can be regarded as a kind of development environment or development platform, and its purpose is the automatic generation of the clinical data acquisition system that supports arbitrary clinical researches. METHODS: Basically, the clinical data acquisition system consists of the interface, the data storage and the clinical research protocols. Our development environment generates these components automatically according to the ontology written by the end user, e.g. a clinical researcher. A clinical data acquisition system is then generated. RESULTS: Our development environment consists of the interface generation module, the database generation module, the temporary data storage generation module for CDA (clinical document architecture), and the ontologies. Ontology is a method of expressing structured information and can be regarded as a knowledge base serialized by XML format. These ontologies are constructed by domain experts who want a clinical research support system. Ontology describes clinical data items, the interface design and the database schema of a clinical data acquisition system. The development environment parses these ontologies and secures the information on how to generate a clinical data acquisition system. CONCLUSION: This study can be utilized to develop the clinical data acquisition system in oriental medicine.