EUREKA: A web based search engine for hospitals

Abstract

This paper presents EUREKA, a special-purpose search engine for hospitals. EUREKA performs queries on a MS SQL Server 2008 database fed by another application with structural and plant information about each hospital room. EUREKA has been developed and tested using the Careggi Polyclinic hospital in Florence as a case-study. EUREKA allows to retrieve data via textual search and also includes an “advanced search” mode with specific filters. Search results are showed as a table: each row corresponds to a room and each column represents the room-associated metadata. Results can be exported to MS Excel or PDF format as tables, crosstabs or hierarchical groups, as well as summary graphs. All the features typical for generic-purpose search engines are allowed, such as relevance sorting, results categorization and fuzzy search function based on a spell checker (as known as Did you mean feature). The system offers the possibility for the users to send feedbacks to the database owners in order to grant a prompt updating. EUREKA is currently in use at Careggi Hospital in Florence, Italy, as a web application written is ASP.NET framework 4.0.