Integrating query of relational and textual data in clinical databases: a case study.
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.
Fisk
John M
JM
Center for Medical Informatics, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA.
Mutalik
Pradeep
P
Levin
Forrest W
FW
Erdos
Joseph
J
Taylor
Caroline
C
Nadkarni
Prakash
P
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