A GRAPH-GRAMMAR APPROACH TO REPRESENT CAUSAL, TEMPORAL AND OTHER CONTEXTS IN AN ONCOLOGICAL PATIENT RECORD

The data of a patient undergoing complex diagnostic and therapeutic pr ocedures do not only form a simple chronology of events, but are close ly related in many ways. Such data contexts include causal or temporal relationships, they express inconsistencies and revision processes, o r describe patient-specific heuristics. The knowledge of data contexts supports the retrospective understanding of the medical decision-maki ng process and is a valuable base for further treatment. Conventional data models usually neglect the problem of context knowledge, or simpl y use free text which is not processed by the program. In connection w ith the development of the knowledge-based system THEMPO (Therapy Mana gement in Pediatric Oncology), which supports therapy and monitoring i n pediatric oncology, a graph-grammar approach has been used to design and implement a graph-oriented patient model which allows the represe ntation of non-trivial (causal, temporal, etc.) clinical contexts. For context acquisition a mouse-based tool has been developed allowing th e physician to specify contexts in a comfortable graphical manner. Fur thermore, the retrieval of contexts is realized with graphical tools a s well.