title: Structuring clinical practice guidelines in a relational database model for decision support on the Internet.
abstract: The rapid proliferation of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) has made computerization increasingly useful to clinicians. Computerization, however, requires transformation of the content and logic of each guideline into a computer-accessible form. In this project, we sought to use a relational database to construct a generalized guideline knowledge base for use with Internet-based decision support applications. We hypothesized that knowledge representation schemes could be developed to capture guideline content and logic within the constraints of a relational database model. In this paper we describe a database schema based on a relational model for computerizing CPGs using a hybrid of structured and procedural knowledge representation schemes. We developed and refined this model in the context of five diverse CPGs and found it accommodated all necessary representational requirements.
authors.affiliation: Department of Community and Family Medicine, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, USA.
authors.forename: D F
authors.initials: DF
authors.lastname: Lobach
authors.forename: C S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Gadd
authors.forename: J W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Hales
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D003195:Computer Communication Networks; D019992:Databases as Topic; D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic