METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR IDENTIFYING RELATIONSHIPS IN DATA BASED ON TIME-DEPENDENT RELATIONSHIPS

• US 20100324938A1
• Filed: 12/10/2008
• Published: 12/23/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 12/28/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Koninklijke Philips N.V.
• Original Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Koninklijke Philips N.V.)
• Inventors: Dutta, Pradyumna, Ennett, Colleen, Ober, N. Stephen
• Application Number:
  US12/808,371
• Publication Number:
  US 20100324938A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/3
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/60 for patient-specific data, e.g. for electronic patient records
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/70 for mining of medical data, e.g. analysing previous cases of other patients

Abstract

A decision support apparatus (100) includes a subject record database (102), a temporally dependent relationship identifier (104), an event predictor (130), a coded subject record database (106), a decision support system processor (108), and a user interface (110). The temporally dependent relationship identifier processes the data in the subject record database (102) to identify temporally dependent relationships in the data. Information indicative of the identified relationships is processed by the processor (108) and presented to a user via the user interface (110).

Claims

1. An apparatus for identifying a relationship in subject data (114) that includes event data (118) indicative of an event experienced by the subject, outcome data (122) indicative of an outcome experienced by the subject, and intervention data (120) indicative of an intervention applied to the subject, the apparatus comprising:

a filter (405) that temporally filters the subject outcome data;

an associator (406) that identifies an association between the event, the outcome, and the intervention as a function of the event data, the temporally filtered outcome data, and the intervention data and that produces an output (150) indicative of the identified relationship.

2. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the subject is a human patient, the intervention is a medical treatment, and the associator identifies a time-dependent clinical association.

3. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the filter filters the subject outcome data to identify outcomes (212) that are members of an outcome set (210) and that occurred during an outcome time interval (302).

4. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the filter filters the subject outcome data according to an outcome interval (302) that is bounded on a first end by a minimum of the times to effect (208) of the interventions (206) in an intervention set (204) that includes a plurality of interventions.

5. The apparatus of claim 4 wherein the outcome interval is bounded on a second end by the sum of a critical intervention period (209) and the maximum of the times to effect of the interventions in the intervention set.

6. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the filter filters the subject outcome data according to a time (308, 310) that is measured from the time of the intervention.

7. The apparatus of claim 1 including a subject record selector (402) that selects subject data (114) for a plurality of subjects and an event filter (404) that filters event data (118) that includes the event.

8. The apparatus of claim 1 including a patient record database (102) that includes retrospective patient demographic data (116), event data (118), intervention data (120), outcome data (122), and temporal relationship data (124) for a plurality of patients.

9. The apparatus of claim 1 including decision support system means (108, 110) for presenting the indicative of the identified association for a plurality of subjects.

10. The apparatus of claim 1 including means (130) for identifying predictors of the event.

11. A computer readable storage medium including instructions which, when carried out by a computer, cause the computer to carry out a method comprising:

identifying, in subject information (114) indicative of a subject that has experienced an event (202), a subject outcome;

determining whether the identified outcome occurred during an outcome time interval (302);

based on a result of the outcome time interval determination, associating the identified outcome and an intervention applied to the subject;

presenting data (150) indicative of the association.

12. The computer readable storage medium of claim 11 wherein the outcome time interval is a function of a minimum time to effect of a first intervention and a maximum time to effect of a second intervention.

13. The computer readable storage medium of claim 11 wherein the outcome time interval is a function of a minimum and a maximum time to effect of the applied intervention.

14. The computer readable storage medium of claim 11 wherein the method includes determining whether the identified outcome is a member of an outcome set (210) that includes a plurality of outcomes (212) and associating includes associating the identified outcome and the applied intervention based on a result of the outcome time interval determination and the outcome set membership determination.

15. The computer readable storage medium of claim 11 wherein the method includes determining whether the applied intervention is member of an intervention set (204) for the event and associating includes associating the identified outcome and the applied intervention based on a result of the outcome time interval determination and the intervention set membership determination.

16. The computer readable storage medium of claim 11 wherein the method includes determining whether the applied intervention is a member of an intervention set (204) and the identified outcome is a member of an outcome set (210), and wherein associating includes associating the event, the applied intervention, and the identified outcome if the applied intervention is determined to be a member of the intervention set, the identified outcome is determined to be a member of the intervention set, and the identified outcome is determined to have occurred during the outcome time interval.

17. A method comprising:

extracting patient information (114) from a retrospective patient record database (102) that includes patient information for a plurality of patients;

processing the patient information to identify temporally-dependent clinical relationships between events experienced by the patients, event-specific outcomes experienced by the patients, and applied event-specific treatments that are likely to have contributed to the experienced outcomes;

for each of a plurality of the patients, storing an output (150) indicative of an identified relationship between an event experienced by the patient, an event-specific outcome experienced by the patient, and an applied event-specific treatment likely to have contributed to the experienced outcome in a coded patient record database (106).

18. The method of claim 17 including:

case-matching a patient of interest and a patient in the coded record database;

presenting information indicative of the patient in the coded record database.

19. The method of claim 17 including evaluating the coded record database to identify an event predictor.

20. The method of claim 19 including:

identifying a correlation between a patient of interest and the identified predictor;

in response to the identified correlation, presenting a possible treatment for application to the patient.

21. An apparatus comprising:

temporally dependent relationship identifier means (104) for processing patient information from a patient record database (102) that stores patient information (114) including patient event data (118), applied intervention data (120), and patient outcome data (122) for a plurality of patients to identify events experienced by the patients, outcomes experienced by the patients during an outcome time interval (302) that is determined as a function of a treatment for the event, and treatments applied to the patients;

a coded subject record database (106) for storing, for each of a plurality of the patients, the identified event (152), the identified outcome (154), and the applied treatment.

22. A computer readable storage medium containing a data structure that includes, for a plurality of subjects:

event data indicative of an event (152) experienced by the subject;

outcome data indicative of an outcome (154) experienced by the subject during an outcome interval (302) that is determined as function of an intervention for the event;

intervention data indicative of an intervention (156) applied to the subject;

wherein the outcomes experienced by the subjects are selected from an outcome set (210) that describes outcomes of the event and the interventions applied to the subjects are selected from an intervention set (204).