Re: health database

Sorry everyone for posting my reply, but I tried to email this person and got returned mail. Dr. Weidong Yu wrote: > > Hi, all, > > We are trying to provide a natural language interface for health > database. Unfortunately, we have no enough knowledge and really data > about health databases, including the patient, doctor, and drug etc. My name is Kevin Ibrahim and I am the Head of Systems & Technology Development for the IAIMS program at the Universtiy of Washington. Our program is a grant that is supposed to do exactly what you ask. There are several universities out there that are currently receiving funding for IAIMS programs. You can find more info about ours from our WWW server at http://www.hslib.washington.edu. We also have lists of other sites with IAIMS programs. Additional comments are interspersed below: For the natural language bit, the National Library of medicine is a good place to start. The UMLS (unified medical language system) was meant to be a building block for this type of work. For the knowledge piece that you ask for. I have degrees in CS and Computer Engineering. When I came here, I was completely lost by the terminology for the first few months. My advise would be to try to get someone with an MD as an advisor. We have 4 in our group. We have a web-based drug database running here in beta test and it wouldn't have even gotten off the ground without a lot of technical discussion from the MD's in our group plus pharmacy staff that we pulled in for the project. One other thing to note. Medical information is COSTLY!!! You probably won't be able to even get your hands on patient records and most reference material such as dictionaries, drug info, etc is either extremely expensive to buy or the publishers won't even talk to you (they are afraid of web-based distribution). About 80% of the companies we talk to won't even think about selling their data for use in internet-based apps. Anyway, good luck.. > > Do you know who is doing similar research? any good suggestions are > appreciated. Please mail to "wyu@cs.uregina.ca". > > Thank you very much in advance! > > Weidong Yu > > -- > ***************************************************************** > * Dr. Weidong Yu Office: CW308.19 * > * Dept. of Computer Science Tel: 306-585-5230(O) * > * Univ. of Regina 306-584-7502(H) * > * Regina, Saskatchewan Fax: 306-585-4745(O) * > * Canada S4S OA2 306-584-7502(H) * > * Email: wyu@cs.uregina.ca http://www.cs.uregina.ca/~wyu * > *****************************************************************