A health terminological system for inherited retinal diseases: Content coverage evaluation and a proposed classification.

Purpose: To present a classification of inherited retinal diseases (IRDs) and evaluate its content coverage in comparison with common standard terminology systems.

Methods: In this comparative cross-sectional study, a panel of subject matter experts annotated a list of IRDs based on a comprehensive review of the literature. Then, they leveraged clinical terminologies from various reference sets including Unified Medical Language System (UMLS), Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM), International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED-CT) and Orphanet Rare Disease Ontology (ORDO).

Discovering Rules from a National Exam Repository: A Use Case for Data Analysis from Iranian Medical Schools Entry Exam.

Many methods have been studied to analyze and interpret patterns and relationships that are embedded in the database to discover new knowledge in educational systems. Association rule mining is a type of data mining that identifies relationships among elements of the dataset. However, because these methods often generate various rules including non-significant ones, it is important to identify the most useful rules.

The First Inherited Retinal Disease Registry in Iran: Research Protocol and Results of a Pilot Study.

Background: To describe the protocol for developing a national inherited retinal disease (IRD) registry in Iran and present its initial report.

Methods: This community-based participatory research was approved by the Ministry of Health and Medical Education of Iran in 2016. To provide the minimum data set (MDS), several focus group meetings were held.

Concept based auto-assignment of healthcare questions to domain experts in online Q&A communities.

Background: Healthcare consumers are increasingly turning to the online health Q&A communities to seek answers for their questions because current general search engines are unable to digest complex health-related questions. Q&A communities are platforms where users ask unstructured questions from different healthcare topics.

Objectives: This study aimed to provide a concept-based approach to automatically assign health questions to the appropriate domain experts.

Similarity of medical concepts in question and answering of health communities.

The ability to automatically categorize submitted questions based on topics and suggest similar question and answer to the users reduces the number of redundant questions. Our objective was to compare intra-topic and inter-topic similarity between question and answers by using concept-based similarity computing analysis. We gathered existing question and answers from several popular online health communities.

Implementing an interface terminology for structured clinical documentation.

Clinically oriented interface terminologies support interactions between humans and computer programs that accept structured entry of healthcare information. This manuscript describes efforts over the past decade to introduce an interface terminology called CHISL (Categorical Health Information Structured Lexicon) into clinical practice as part of a computer-based documentation application at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Vanderbilt supports a spectrum of electronic documentation modalities, ranging from transcribed dictation, to a partial template of free-form notes, to strict, structured data capture.

Identification of pre-coordinated term candidates in a Cardiology Outpatient Service.

Structured data entry systems have been used to facilitate detailed categorical entries which may be subsequently used for computer-assisted decision support. While these highly organized entry systems may encourage providers to document clinical findings more precisely, the detailed nature of these entries may prove more time consuming than traditional data collection systems. We retrospectively examine results entered in our structured entry system in this study for pre-coordination opportunities as a potential enhancement to the system.

Prevalence and inaccessibility of URLs in the biomedical literature.

The World Wide Web is a dynamic environment that does not guarantee permanent access or content stability. We determined the prevalence of URLs in forthcoming, biomedical papers when they are first released in MEDLINE(R) and prospectively evaluated the rate of inaccessible URLs during a 19-day period. Among 96,153 references from 2,614 forthcoming papers (739 journals) the prevalence of URLs was 0.

The prevalence and inaccessibility of Internet references in the biomedical literature at the time of publication.

Objectives: To determine the prevalence and inaccessibility of Internet references in the bibliography of biomedical publications when first released in PubMed.

Methods: During a one-month observational study period (Feb 21 to Mar 21, 2006) the Internet citations from a 20% random sample of all forthcoming publications released in PubMed during the previous day were identified. Attempts to access the referenced Internet citations were completed within one day and inaccessible Internet citations were recorded.

Factors affecting the sustainability of information technology applications in health care.

Biomedical informatics is a relatively new field; sustainability of information technology applications has not been studied in detail. We examined what factors contribute to sustainability in other fields (ecology, construction materials, business, primary health care, and environment and development). We describe some aspects of sustainability that can be applied to biomedical informatics: effectiveness, efficiency, financial viability, reproducibility, and portability.