Interactive Information Retrieval as a Step Towards Effective Knowledge Management in Healthcare

Abstract

The chapter shows how modern information retrieval methodologies can open up new possibilities to support knowledge management in healthcare. Recent advances in hospital information systems lead to the acquisition of huge quantities of data, often characterized by a high proportion of free narrative text embedded in the electronic health record. We point out how text mining techniques augmented by novel algorithms that combine artificial neural networks for the semantic organization of non-crisp data and hyperbolic geometry for an intuitive navigation in huge data sets can offer efficient tools to make medical knowledge in such data collections more accessible to the medical expert by providing context information and links to knowledge buried in medical literature databases.