Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
for specifying a complex medical protocol related to the diagnoses of ECG signal.
The main objective to use Event-B modelling language is to model medical proto-
cols using the refinement approach. The medical protocols are very complex and to
model a complex protocol, a refinement approach is very helpful, which introduces
peculiarity of the protocols in an incremental way. This technique is used to model a
medical protocol more rigorously based on formal mathematics, which helps to find
the anomalies and provide the consistency and correctness of the medical protocol.
10.3 Selection of Medical Protocol
Concerning the protocols that is the object of our study, we have selected the ECG
interpretation that covers a wide range of protocol characteristics related to the heart
diseases. All kinds of medical guidelines and protocols to differ from each others
along several dimensions, which can be referred to the contents of the protocols or
to its form. General practitioners (GPs), nurses and a large group of people related
to this domain
2
are the
most important target users
of the guidelines and protocols,
and the main aspects of clinical practice are to cover
diagnosis
as well as help in
treatments. The medical guidelines and protocols, which are used by general practi-
tioners and nurses, are also characterised by time dimensions; short time-span pro-
tocols; long-time span protocols. The form of guidelines and protocols are related
to the textual descriptions. Sometimes it is also represented in the textual form as
well as the combination with
tables
and
flowcharts
.
The ECG interpretation protocol [
4
,
16
] aims at cardiologist as well as GPs and
covers both diagnosis and treatment over a long period of time. The ECG interpre-
tation protocol can be considered more precisely: one is in daily use by cardiologist,
and the other is included in the repository of the National Guideline Clearinghouse
(NGC), American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA).
The basic standard for inclusion in the NGC and ACC/AHA are that the guidelines
and protocols to contain well structured meaningful informations and systematically
developed statements. The contents are produced under the supervision of medical
specialty associations. It should be also based on literatures, reviewed and revised
within the last 5 years. Furthermore, the ECG interpretation protocol has been pub-
lished in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. In summary, the chosen protocol covers
different aspects while fulfilling high-quality standards, which are the good criteria
for selection of our case study.
In the following sections, we will use the ECG interpretation protocol as the
main example in our explanations, and we therefore give a brief description of this
protocol. The Electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG) interpretation is a common tech-
nique to trace abnormalities in the heart system and various levels of tracing help to
find severe diseases. The guideline is more than 100 pages document, which con-
tains knowledge in various notations: the main text; a list of factors to be considered
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