title: Integrating query of relational and textual data in clinical databases: a case study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The authors designed and implemented a clinical data mart composed of an integrated information retrieval (IR) and relational database management system (RDBMS).
  
  
  METHODS
  Using commodity software, which supports interactive, attribute-centric text and relational searches, the mart houses 2.8 million documents that span a five-year period and supports basic IR features such as Boolean searches, stemming, and proximity and fuzzy searching.
  
  
  METHODS
  Results are relevance-ranked using either "total documents per patient" or "report type weighting."
  
  
  RESULTS
  Non-curated medical text has a significant degree of malformation with respect to spelling and punctuation, which creates difficulties for text indexing and searching. Presently, the IR facilities of RDBMS packages lack the features necessary to handle such malformed text adequately.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A robust IR+RDBMS system can be developed, but it requires integrating RDBMSs with third-party IR software. RDBMS vendors need to make their IR offerings more accessible to non-programmers.
authors.affiliation: Center for Medical Informatics, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA.
authors.forename: John M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Fisk
authors.forename: Pradeep
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mutalik
authors.forename: Forrest W
authors.initials: FW
authors.lastname: Levin
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Erdos
authors.forename: Caroline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.forename: Prakash
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Nadkarni
mesh_terms: D000043:Abstracting and Indexing; D000465:Algorithms; D003628:Database Management Systems; D016208:Databases, Factual; D006751:Hospital Information Systems / Q000458:organization & administration*; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D007256:Information Systems; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized / Q000458:organization & administration; D012984:Software; D018511:Systems Integration; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled