Algorithmic and user study of an autocompletion algorithm on a large medical vocabulary.
BACKGROUND
Autocompletion supports human-computer interaction in software applications that let users enter textual data. We will be inspired by the use case in which medical professionals enter ontology concepts, catering the ongoing demand for structured and standardized data in medicine.


OBJECTIVE
Goal is to give an algorithmic analysis of one particular autocompletion algorithm, called multi-prefix matching algorithm, which suggests terms whose words' prefixes contain all words in the string typed by the user, e.g., in this sense, opt ner me matches optic nerve meningioma. Second we aim to investigate how well it supports users entering concepts from a large and comprehensive medical vocabulary (snomed ct).


METHODS
We give a concise description of the multi-prefix algorithm, and sketch how it can be optimized to meet required response time. Performance will be compared to a baseline algorithm, which gives suggestions that extend the string typed by the user to the right, e.g. optic nerve m gives optic nerve meningioma, but opt ner me does not. We conduct a user experiment in which 12 participants are invited to complete 40 snomed ct terms with the baseline algorithm and another set of 40 snomed ct terms with the multi-prefix algorithm.


RESULTS
Our results show that users need significantly fewer keystrokes when supported by the multi-prefix algorithm than when supported by the baseline algorithm.


CONCLUSIONS
The proposed algorithm is a competitive candidate for searching and retrieving terms from a large medical ontology.
Healthcare Information Management, Philips Research, High Tech Campus 34, 5656 AA Eindhoven, The Netherlands. merlijn.sevenster@philips.com
Merlijn
M
Sevenster
Rob
R
van Ommering
Yuechen
Y
Qian
D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized / Q000592:standards*; D008875:Middle Aged; D039061:Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled