Information retrieval from heterogeneous data sources: An application for managing medical records

Abstract

Creating digital medical records and retrieve relevant information from them is a complex task. This complexity is given by the mixture of structured and unstructured information found in traditional medical records and that such information could be distributed in different data sources. The main contribution of this paper is the design of an architecture for an Information Retrieval (IR) system that integrates heterogeneous data sources, with a query interface in natural language. This system uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques in order to transform the user query in subqueries to be executed on different data sources, profiting the query capabilities of Database (DB) and IR technologies. The system is connected to the MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia to extend the results obtained from a query showing relevant articles to it. In addition, a general application of this design is proposed to address the medical records management problem in a Cuban hospital. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.