ARIANE - INTEGRATION OF INFORMATION DATABASES WITHIN A HOSPITAL INTRANET

Large information systems handle massive volume of data stored in hete rogeneous sources. Each server has its own model of representation of concepts with regard to its aims. One of the main problems end-users e ncounter when accessing different servers is to match their own viewpo int on biomedical concepts with the various representations that are m ade in the databases servers. The aim of the project ARIANE is to prov ide end-users with easy-to-use and natural means to access and query h eterogeneous information databases.The objectives of this research wor k consist in building a conceptual interface by means of the Internet technology inside an enterprise Intranet and to propose a method to re alize it. This method is based on the knowledge sources provided by th e Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) project of the US National Li brary of Medicine. Experiments concern queries to three different info rmation servers: PubMed, a Medline server of the NLM; Theriaque, a Fre nch database on drugs implemented in the Hospital Intranet; and a Web site dedicated to Internet resources in gastroenterology and nutrition , located at the Faculty of Medicine of Nice (France). Accessing to ea ch of these servers is different according to the kind of information delivered and according to the technology used to query it. Dealing wi th health care professional workstation, the authors introduced in the ARIANE project quality criteria in order to attempt a homogeneous and efficient way to build a query system able to be integrated in existi ng information systems and to integrate existing and new information s ources. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.