Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
is what we call
pertinence
: the more needed or interesting the data group is for the
context, the higher is its pertinence to the context.
There is a great variety of factors to consider to compute this pertinence like:
•
The regulations about each clinical process. Usually the information relevant
for each act of some pathologies (not of all), is fixed by protocols set by govern-
mental institutions, by the hospitals or by the medical services.
•
The opinion of the concrete doctor. In addition to the regulations, each doctor
can consider that, from his/her point of view, there are other items that must also
be taken into account.
•
The own history of a concrete patient. Some data groups without significance
for the majority of the patients, may have a great and especial importance for a
given patient.
•
The aging of the information. With the time there are tests that loose their va-
lidity, because they are too old or because there are new tests of the same type.
•
The access patterns. It is possible that the medical staff starts to access fre-
quently a concrete data group for a given situation, and that they are not in-
formed or “conscious” of it, so they don't include it through any of the previous
ways. Taking into account this aspect of the pertinence, new patterns of access
can be discovered and also the system can also automatically adapt to them.
The system must be capable of representing and bringing together all these aspects
of the pertinence. The way we propose to do it is shown in next sections, where we
present a method to capture and calculate each of these aspects of the pertinence.
Static Pertinence: Regulations, Doctors and Patients
As static pertinence we understand those set by medical criteria or given by the
medical staff. Therefore, we consider three types of static pertinence, corresponding
to three of the its aspects mentioned above:
On one hand, the medical criteria and regulations that determine which informa-
tion must be always taken into account for a given process or pathology.
On the other hand, there personal opinions or even research studies of the doc-
tors, that lead them to find a specific information item especially relevant for all the
patients they see in a concrete
context
.
In addition, must be considered the concrete data group is particularly important
for a given patient but not for the rest.
Hence, we include in the system three degrees of pertinence defined by doctors or
medical criteria: one associated to the regulations (
P
Dc
∈
[
0
,
1
]
), another one related
to the personal opinion of the doctor (
P
Dc
∈
[
0
,
1
]
) and the other one associated to
the specific patient (
P
Dc
∈
[
0
,
1
]
).
Time Pertinence
The pertinence of a group of data (and the implicit document) will depend too on
the date of creation. It is logic that the results of an analysis will be more important
if it was completed a few days before than if it was performed a year ago.
