Web-based Medical Services in the Regional Health Care Network of Crete
by Catherine Chronaki, Xenophon Zabulis, Manolis Tsiknakis, and Stelios
Orphanoudakis
During the last few years, the Center for Medical Informatics and
Health Telematics Applications at the Institute of Computer Science (CMI-HTA),
FORTH, is actively involved in the development of web-based services that
allow medical specialists to access information related to their profession,
regardless of their actual geographic location. As these web-based medical
services are gradually integrated to the results of other EU and national
projects, healthcare professionals will be able to collaborate with their
peers, share opinions, exchange clinical data, and access regional information.
Hence, continuity of care will be promoted at a regional, national, and
transnational level.
In the regional network of Crete, the WWW paradigm for information access
and delivery has been adopted to provide authorized users with integrated
medical services through an unmodified web browser. This web-based environment,
initially created for the collection and annotation of image collections
will gradually integrate patient record data that will allow the discussion
of medical cases and promote remote opinion request and tele-consultation.
The gradual integration of patient record data will take into account data,
presentation, control, and functional integration aspects. A domain specific
framework for the integration of distributed patient record segments maintained
by heterogeneous autonomous information systems which form the logical
components of the patient record will be adapted for that purpose.
Initially, the provided medical services will include image processing,
content-and annotation-based search for images and annotations, authoring
of annotations and image descriptions, and user collaboration facilities.
Asynchronous collaboration through e-mail, postings, and shared workspaces
as well as synchronous collaboration through an on-line collaboration forum
will be facilitated. Furthermore, the Image Indexing by Content network,
(I2Cnet), will provide content-based access to medical image collections
and related data. Consequently, health care professionals may browse through
medical images and related patient data guided by different notions of
image similarity, thus sharing experience and information regardless of
their physical location.
Shared Workspaces
Shared workspaces support the cooperation of authorized users and service
integration by providing secure and transparent access to a heterogeneous
data collection anytime and anywhere browser software and a network connection
are available. This data collection may include web service results and
multimedia data objects (images, voice, video, patient annotations, etc.)
which are inserted by the users sharing the workspace. Thus, multiple users
may collaborate over a workspace, sharing material of common interest.
All services have workspace access, making the transfer of data from one
service to another seamless and transparent irrespective of the actual
network location of the data object (see figure).
Workspaces facilitate the integration of web-based medical services
by providing transparent access to multimedia data.
Image Processing Service
An extensible collection of image processing and analysis algorithms
can be supported. These algorithms allow remote users to use the algorithms
present at various sites to analyze images which reside anywhere on the
Web. This service is based on an algorithm execution tool which facilitates
the dynamic introduction of new image analysis and processing algorithms.
The algorithm execution tool reads an algorithm description file and dynamically
creates the Web interface of the algorithm. The algorithm execution tool
employs an execution agent that handles the platform specific details of
the algorithm execution, separating the client user interface from the
execution platform.
Annotation Service
The objective of the annotation service is to provide healthcare professionals
with the ability to interact with imagery, creating, viewing, and communicating
annotations on groups of images. An annotation may include graphics and
text grouped in multiple overlays and be associated with various media
types such as images, text, sound, hypertext, video. The annotation service
allows users to collaborate over groups of diagnostic images and related
patient data. Hence, medical specialists may create annotations for their
private collections, discuss them using e-mail, or use them in discussion
fora and on-line collaboration sessions.
On-line Collaboration Service
The on-line collaboration service permits user interaction in pseudo-real
time through the discussion of multimedia data objects ranging from electrocardiograms
and diagnostic images to laboratory results. Users sharing a workspace
may discuss using an on-line talk facility and comment on various workspace
objects. The contents of the workspace constitute the conference material,
and the user that requests the launching of the collaboration session controls
the floor. In the course of an on-line session, the joint annotation of
a group of images may be performed.
A regional network provides healthcare professionals with the necessary
infrastructure to collaborate with their peers, share opinions, exchange
clinical data, and access regional information. We believe that integrated
medical services as the ones discussed here, will facilitate the interaction
and active participation of a large number of users in the evolution of
the information repositories in the regional healthcare network. For further
information please visit http://www.ics.forth.gr/~telemed/services.html
Please contact:
Catherine Chronaki
or Manolis Tsiknakis ICS-FORTH
Tel: +30 81 391690
E-mail: {chronaki,tsiknaki}@ics.forth.gr
