WEB Based Tool for the Organization of Knowledge in Neurology M. Giacomini and M. Cafferata Department of Communication Computer and System Science, University of Genova, Genova, Italy Abstract—The collection of medical data emergent from a series of specific examinations quickly and accurately is the basis of the procedure that allows the medical staff of a department of neurology to perform custom analysis and assess the presence of atherosclerosis in the blood vessel. The project's aim is to develop a web application for the collection, the organization and the presentation of data from case history, clinical, hematological and instrumental in order to make therapeutic plans integrated through the work of various specialists and establish a protocol for diagnostic assistance patients suffering from this disease while minimizing the possibility of errors and allowing the display of data in a clear and immediate way. Keywords—Eco-Doppler; Patient Record; Web based organization.
transcranial doppler, brain computerized axial tomography and the results of this are important to ensure the health of the patient and any necessary treatments. to work more quickly by allowing the release of more specialists is very useful to collect the data using a web application; so it is possible to facilitate all users readability of data and organize a more efficient scheduling of visits. A very important aspect to be taken into account in the design of this work is the protection of personal data of patients to prevent the disclosure of personal information to unauthorized persons. The proposal to execute a project with these features came from the medical staff of the department of neurology of Sestri Ponente.
II. METHODS
I. INTRODUCTION Atherosclerosis is a disease affecting arterial blood vessels. It is caused by the accumulation of macrophage white blood cells and promoted by low density lipoproteins without adequate removal of fats and cholesterol from the macrophages by functional high density lipoproteins. It is caused by the formation of multiple plaques within the arteries. Atherosclerosis has some consequence: the plaques narrow the vase and it loss the wall elasticity so there is a reduction of the blood flow; the thrombosis, that caused an abrupt arrest of the circulatory stream with consequent necrosis of the limb, of the organ or of the brain; the breakup of the interested vase.[1] In recent years, it has been shown a possible causal link between the distal aortic arch atherosclerosis and and the onset of stroke embolism. The study shown that the prevalence of ulcerated plaques increases with age. In about 60% of stroke patients older than 60 years, these authors have shown the presence of plaques. [2] In agreement with this information, doctors try to give more attention to early detection of disease, prevention and control of the state of health of patients who already show signs of atherosclerosis. To do this it is important to refer the person to a series of clinical examinations like for example echocolordoppler,
Ms SQL Server 2005, Ms Visual Studio 2005 have been chosen as development tools, mainly because of their security and performance features. The problem of the definition of the database has been approached using 3 levels: conceptual planning (creation of the Entity-Relation diagrams), logical planning (creation of the use-cases UML diagrams) and physical planning (implementation of database tables). [3] The starting material consists of a list of medical data and clinical tests that the doctors of the department of neurology have provided because important for the analysis of the patient.
III. RESULTS For the realization of this project we use first a description of the database in question, the entity relationship diagram in Figure 1 that represents the general structure of database This includes personal data of the patient, anamnestic dates, information related to examination, blood tests, echocardiogram, ecodoppler legs, echocolordoppler TSA, transcranial doppler, TAC brain, angio RMN vessels of the neck.
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Fig. 1 E-R Diagram
Fig. 2 Example of visit page
Fig. 3 Navigation menu
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Fig. 4 Login Page
Fig. 5 Page of personal date The web application was created with the aim to allow the user to communicate with the database to include data or to access them in order to facilitate the diagnosis by the simultaneous display of all information of a patient (Fig.2). To help users and allow it to find more quickly the values of interest has been given particular attention to the navigability of the site to facilitate the transition from page to page of the program. So after creating the site map we used the visualization tools of ASP.NET .2 for the navigation menu (Fig.3), links and buttons to move to different screens.[4] To ensure that the data on a single subject are accessible only to authorized personnel a login page (Fig.4) was added in order to allow access to the site only to persons desig-
nated with the corresponding password in the web config page of the website. For further protection of personal information it was decided to separate the interface containing the personal data (Fig.5) from those that contain the values doctors, in the latter the patient is identified only by the initials of the name and a unique identifying number linked to it. [5] This product aims to improve the health of the population by enhancing screening efficacy and shortening waiting lists, with economic advantages for patients and the whole system, but it also aims to make the system friendlier to the patient: in the near future, in fact, it will be possible to extend the data sharing to patients by a specific simplified user
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interface, visible on his/her own PC through a Web connection, using another specific and more protected method of the Web Service.
Genova, especially we want to thank dr. Giovanni Bino for his useful advices.
REFERENCES IV. CONCLUSIONS This paper presents a still on working project in which we aims to show the possibilities offered by Medical Informatics to a small hospital in order to make it capable to contribute to clinical research even in front of their situation of chronic lack of time. Moreover, we intend to arrange standard interfaces to make these highly structured data also available for further researches, even not directly linked to this specific hospital.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki http://www.spread.it www.microsoft.com F.Balena, Visual Basic .NET, ASP:NET & Web Service, Mondadori Informatica http://programmazione.html.it
Corresponding Author: Institute: Street: City: Country: Email:
We want to thanks all medical doctors of the Neurological Unit of p. Antero Micone Hospital of Western side of
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Mauro Giacomini DIST – University of Genova Via All’Opera Pia 13 Genova Italy
[email protected]
