title: A distributed, collaborative, structuring model for a clinical-guideline digital-library.
abstract: The Digital Electronic Guideline Library (DeGeL) is a Web-based framework and a set of distributed tools that facilitate gradual conversion of clinical guidelines from free text, through semi-structured text, to a fully structured, executable representation. Thus, guidelines exist in a hybrid, multiple-format representation The three formats support increasingly sophisticated computational tasks. The tools perform semantic markup, classification, search, and browsing, and support computational modules that we are developing, for run-time application and retrospective quality assessment. We describe the DeGeL architecture and its collaborative-authoring authorization model, which is based on (1) multiple medical-specialty authoring groups, each including a group manager who controls group authorizations, and (2) a hierarchical authorization model based on the different functions involved in the hybrid guideline-specification process. We have implemented the core modules of the DeGeL architecture and demonstrated distributed markup and retrieval using the knowledge roles of two guidelines ontologies (Asbru and GEM). We are currently evaluating several of the DeGeL tools.
authors.affiliation: Department of Information Systems Engineering, Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva, Israel.
authors.forename: Yuval
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shahar
authors.forename: Erez
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Shalom
authors.forename: Alon
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mayaffit
authors.forename: Ohad
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Young
authors.forename: Maya
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Galperin
authors.forename: Susana
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Martins
authors.forename: Mary
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Goldstein
mesh_terms: D003195:Computer Communication Networks / Q000458:organization & administration*; D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical; D005103:Expert Systems; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D020407:Internet; D046609:Libraries, Digital; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled