BUILDING A MEDICAL MULTIMEDIA DATABASE SYSTEM TO INTEGRATE CLINICAL INFORMATION - AN APPLICATION OF HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY

The rapid growth of diagnostic-imaging technologies over the past two decades has dramatically increased the amount of nontextual data gener ated in clinical medicine. The architecture of traditional, text-orien ted, clinical information systems has made the integration of digitize d clinical images with the patient record problematic. Systems for the classification, retrieval, and integration of clinical images are in their infancy. Recent advances in high-performance computing, imaging, and networking technology now make it technologically and economicall y feasible to develop an integrated, multimedia, electronic patient re cord. As part of The National Library of Medicine's Biomedical Applica tions of High-Performance Computing and Communications program, we pla n to develop Image Engine, a prototype microcomputer-based system for the storage, retrieval, integration, and sharing of a wide range of cl inically important digital images. Images stored in the Image Engine d atabase will be indexed and organized using the Unified Medical Langua ge System Metathesaurus and will be dynamically linked to data in a te xt-based, clinical information system. We will evaluate Image Engine b y initially implementing it in three clinical domains (oncology, gastr oenterology, and clinical pathology) at the University of Pittsburgh M edical Center.