Andrew McIntyre wrote: > Hello Tim, > > > Tuesday, February 21, 2006, 8:36:58 PM, you wrote: > > TC> Andrew McIntyre wrote: >>> Hello Tim, >>> >>> OK, you can arrow down and select the appropriate concept. Really you >>> need 2 words or a very complex word or its to vague for a search. Its >>> also essential to restrict the top level concept to a defined parent, >>> such as procedure or clinical finding, as a minimum. > > TC> Um, the attached screenshot shows a tree list of terms containing > TC> duodenal. Am I right in thinking that one needs to chose various > TC> restrictions as you describe before typing some words to look up? Not > TC> quite what I had in mind... > > No, that's in code, behind the scenes. You need to know what sort of > values you want in the field, which you would, in the example its a > "Clinical finding" rather than a procedure. In general you want to > know what type of code you want in a field, or you may make a > nonsensical statement. In this case I typed "Duodenal Ulcer" and the > list popped up.
OK, thanks. As an aside, "screencasts" - short movies of software in action, usually with a voice-over, seem to be the tool of choice for illustrating such things. We just bought a copy of Camtasia for that purpose - several hundred dollars only - and it's the ant's pants. Now, where's my Director's Chair. Lights, cameras, action! >>> Restricting the search is vital as there are 2 many concepts >>> otherwise. > > TC> The trick, Andrew, is to sort the choices by likelihood of being the > TC> correct choice. > > Well if I type "duodenal ulcer" as the free text the choices look > pretty correct to me. > >>> We use some complexity testing before we do a background >>> search. Archetypes are excellent for restricting the query. > > TC> Complexity testing? You've lost me there? Something to do with teh > TC> entropy of the words (as in password complexity testing)? > > Yes, if you type "Ulcer" as a search term then there are to many > possible choices, if you type "Thrombocytopenia" or > "Choledocholithiasis" then a search is worth a go. Finding a reliable > rule for this is something that needs some more R&D. Typing "Duodenal > ulcer" seems good enough to get a reasonable pick list in this case. > Its also what people are likely to call it. Exploring some natural > language Processing here is likely to help also. There are 2 snomed CT > coding schools however - The "choice restrainers" and the "Natural > Language Processing" camp. I probably lean to the former, while > wanting to leverage the later. OK, I understand what you mean now - basically "inverse term frequency" as researchers working in information retrieval tend to call it (but yes, it can be more complex than that). > Its a bit like google, typing "and" is not going to get you very far > (NASA interestingly!) > > The aim of archetypes is to restrict choices for you (You don't have > to type them in, they are in the ADL) That way if you choose a report > about eg Cholecystectomy, you are not shown concepts about colectomy > or cystoscopy or rabies. > > If people are presented with a reasonable list of choices they might > use it. Browsing raw snomed for a term is not practical, you also need > to be sure that you are choosing a concept from the correct branch of > snomed-CT. We are looking for Name=Value Pairs and unless you choose > from the correct branch you may end up with Value=name, name=name or > value=value. Yes, we are in the process of creating a set of extensions to the current Australian standards for path reporting to allow path labs to unambiguously report communicable disease notifications (to health departments) in a canonical form. That process includes the selection of all relevant SNOMED-CT codes from which path labs can chose for any particular notification message. Such pre-selection of SCT codes in itself is not a trivial task, we are finding. > Snomed-CT has a lot of ip behind it, its not just a "Big List" and you > can do some really complex things with it, but it does take some > investment in time to understand it, I am certainly still learning, > but its impressive, if a little flawed in areas. Snomed-CT are aware > of some of the flaws and its evolving and improving with time. It > seems its going to come to Australia so we may as well use it to its > fullest advantage. An Australian Medication extension would be nice. Agreed on all points. Tim C >>> Tuesday, February 21, 2006, 4:22:38 PM, you wrote: >>> >>> TC> Andrew McIntyre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>>>> Hello Tim, >>>>> >>>>> TC> Having seen your demo, I still think that the dream of a mechanism >>>>> TC> in which the GP types the first few characters of each term into a >>>>> TC> text box and the system provides an intelligent set of guesses >>>>> TC> about whcih SCT concept (or English language word) was intended >>>>> TC> and auto-completes it for him/her is feasible. >>>>> >>>>> You can stop dreaming, its done ;-) >>> TC> Andrew, >>> >>> TC> Jolly good, show us! >>> >>> TC> Tim C >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Gpcg_talk mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk > > > > _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
