Duftschmid Georg, Miksch Silvia, Gall Walter
Department of Medical Computer Sciences, University of Vienna, Spitalgasse 23, A-1090, Vienna, Austria.
Artif Intell Med. 2002 Jun;25(2):93-121. doi: 10.1016/s0933-3657(02)00011-8.
The computerization of clinical practice guidelines is a significant scientific challenge for the medical informatics community. One frequently reported factor hindering this objective is the existence of deficiencies within guideline knowledge. In this paper, we focus on the detection of flaws within temporal scheduling constraints. Temporal scheduling constraints are important elements of therapy management, and are frequently incorporated in clinical practice guidelines. We present a suitable verification method that is based on calculating the minimal network of temporal constraints on the execution of guideline activities. Our method serves three purposes: (1) it checks whether temporal scheduling constraints are consistent with scheduling constraints implied by control flow operators and the hierarchical structuring of a guideline; (2) it yields suggestions for an equivalent, yet more explicit representation of non-minimal constraints; (3) it can be used by the guideline interpreter to assemble feasible time intervals for the execution of each guideline activity. We evaluate our approach by applying it to a guideline specified in the Asbru language. For this purpose, we implemented a prototype verifier. Although we concentrate on the guideline representation language Asbru as the demonstration medium of our method within this paper, our approach can be reused to verify several alternative guideline representation formats.
临床实践指南的计算机化对医学信息学界来说是一项重大的科学挑战。一个经常被报道的阻碍这一目标实现的因素是指南知识中存在缺陷。在本文中，我们专注于检测时间调度约束中的缺陷。时间调度约束是治疗管理的重要元素，并且经常被纳入临床实践指南中。我们提出了一种合适的验证方法，该方法基于计算指南活动执行的时间约束的最小网络。我们的方法有三个目的：（1）检查时间调度约束是否与控制流运算符和指南的层次结构所隐含的调度约束一致；（2）为非最小约束提供等效但更明确的表示建议；（3）可供指南解释器用于为每个指南活动的执行组装可行的时间间隔。我们通过将其应用于用Asbru语言指定的指南来评估我们的方法。为此，我们实现了一个原型验证器。虽然在本文中我们专注于将指南表示语言Asbru作为我们方法的演示媒介，但我们的方法可以被重新用于验证几种替代的指南表示格式。
