TOWARDS A QUANTITATIVE APPROACH OF MEDICAL INFORMATION .1. MEASURES OF A MULTIDIMENSIONAL MEDICAL INFORMATION SPACE

Despite the importance of quantitative analysis of medical information , it is a rare subject in informatics literature [1, 2]. To stimulate more interest the authors propose a multidimensional medical informati on space, in which measures can be defined to compare different medica l information objects or knowledge areas. To describe the measures, cl assical information theory, the general database theory of Sundgren an d the Blois model of medical thinking are used. A space model of (at l east) three dimensions is offered, where information objects might hav e a normalized length, a total depth (measuring embedded knowledge lev els) and a complexity width.