title: A model of clinical query management that supports integration of biomedical information over the World Wide Web.
abstract: A model of clinical query management is described that supports the integration of various types of biomedical information and the delivery of that information through a common interface. The model extends the architecture of the World Wide Web to include a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) mediator, which takes in user queries, performs syntactic and semantic processing to transform the input to a canonical form, selects the appropriate information sources to answer the query, translates the canonical query statement into a query of each information resource, queries the chosen information sources in parallel, and controls the analysis and display of results. We describe WebMedline, a CGI mediator that implements portions of this model, and discuss the benefits and limitations of this approach.
authors.affiliation: Section on Medical Informatics, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA.
authors.forename: W M
authors.initials: WM
authors.lastname: Detmer
authors.forename: E H
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Shortliffe
mesh_terms: D003195:Computer Communication Networks; D003199:Computer Systems; D007255:Information Services; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D016239:MEDLINE; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D018511:Systems Integration; D014584:User-Computer Interface