Incorporating family and social structures into clinical documentation andretrieval

Referencing familial and social relationships between patients supplies val uable information for thr retrieval and interpretation of clinical data. We present a technique for the incorporation of patient relations into data r etrieval that takes into account the specific properties of routinely colle cted clinical data. In most clinical databases, family relations are docume nted in a fragmentary manner at best. Furthermore, clinical retrieval syste ms do not support inter-patient queries in most cases. Our model is designe d to formulate direct relations between patients and to identify patients a s members of either temporary or persistent communities. In this way, the m odel supplies information on both genetic and social relations.