Contextual Searching of Electronic Records and Visual Rule Construction

• US 20090106238A1
• Filed: 10/15/2008
• Published: 04/23/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 10/18/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cerner Innovation, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Siemens Medical Solutions USA Incorporated (Siemens AG)
• Inventors: Matos, Gilberto Augusto, Niculescu, Radu Stefan, Lita, Lucian Vlad, Qazi, Maleeha
• Granted Patent: US 8,370,352 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/313 Selection or weighting of terms for indexing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/338 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/60 for patient-specific data, e.g. for electronic patient records

Abstract

A web-based system for visual construction of logical rules includes a server, a network, and client operatively connected to the server via the network. The server includes a database and a search engine. The client includes a web-based visual rule building application including selectable windows for displaying and visually editing terms, logical operators, logical rules for storage in the database. The logical rules are generated by visually selecting at least one of the terms and logical operators from the windows. The server may further include a search engine configured to perform at least one of a direct search or a contextual search for an entered query string in records stored in the database and the client may include a visual interface for displaying results of the searches. The search results generated by the search engine may be stored as terms in the database for subsequent rule generation.

Claims

1. A system for searching electronic records and displaying relevant data based on the search, the system comprising:

a searching unit configured to search for text in the electronic records that are within a context of an entered query string; and

a visual interface configured to display results of the search, wherein a context comprises text that precedes or follows the entered query string in the electronic record that influences the meaning of the query string.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the text is determined to be within the context of the entered query string when it precedes or follows the entered query string up to a terminal character.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the system is configured to search for strings in the records that are also within a context of a string related to the entered query string, wherein the related string is one of a synonym, hypemym, hyponym, inflection, or part of the query string.

4. The system of the claim 2, wherein the terminal character comprises one of punctuation, a bullet, or a space.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the records comprise one of a medical, financial, or legal record.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the context comprises at least one of a phrasal based or a list based context.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the system is further configured to suppress display of personal information from the results of the search.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the system is configured to provide statistics corresponding to a frequency of occurrence for each of the results.

9. A system for building logical rules for searching electronic records, the system comprising:

a visual interface for building the logical rules, wherein the interface comprises a selectable window for displaying at least one of the logical rules, wherein the logical rules are added to the window by selecting at least one of a plurality of logical operators and at least one of a plurality of terms, wherein each of the rules is represented by a tree in the window and the tree comprises at least one of the logical operators as a node of the tree and at least one of the terms as a leaf of the tree.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the visual interface further comprises a selectable menu with an option to insert a logical operator as a parent node to a selected node in the tree.

11. The system of claim 9, wherein the visual interface further comprises a selectable menu with an option to insert a logical operator as a parent node of at least two sibling nodes in the tree, when at least one of the siblings is selected.

12. The system of claim 9, wherein the visual interface further comprises a selectable menu with an option to remove all children nodes of a selected node in the tree.

13. The system of claim 9, wherein the visual interface further comprises a selectable menu with an option to remove a selected parent node in the tree and retain its children by re-parenting the children to a grand-parent node of the children.

14. The system of claim 9, wherein the visual interface further comprises a selectable menu with an option to assign parameter values to a selected node in the tree.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the selectable menu further comprises an option to restore children nodes of a selected node to a default state by removing the parameter values.

16. The system of claim 9, wherein the visual interface indicates an error in the built rule by displaying a visual icon near the rule.

17. A web-based system for visual construction of logical rules, the system comprising:

a server comprising a database;

a network; and

a client operatively connected to the server via the network, wherein the client comprises a web-based visual rule building application, wherein the application comprises;

a first selectable window for displaying and visually editing terms for storage in the database;

a second selectable window for displaying and visually editing logical operators for storage in the database; and

a third selectable window for displaying and visually editing logic rules for storage in the database, wherein the logical rules are generated by visually selecting at least one of the terms from the first window and at least one of the logical operators from the second window.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein each of the logical rules is represented by a tree in the third window and the tree comprises at least one of the logical operators as a node of the tree and at least one of the terms as a leaf of the tree.

19. The system of claim 17, wherein the server further comprises a search engine configured to perform at least one of a direct search or a contextual search for an entered query string in records stored in the database, and wherein the client further comprises a visual interface for displaying results of the searches.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein search results generated by the search engine are stored as terms in the database.