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The National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE (MEDLARS Online) database was the first database to be searched nationwide via value-added telecommunication networks. Now available on the World Wide Web free of charge from the National Library of Medicine and from many other sources, it is the world's most heavily used medical database. MEDLINE is unique in that each reference to the medical literature is indexed under a controlled vocabulary called Medical [...]

This paper provides a detailed description of a method developed for purposes of linking records of individual patients, represented in diverse data sets, across time and geography.

As we have advanced in medical informatics and created many impressive innovations, we also have learned that technologic developments are not sufficient to bring the value of computer and information technologies to health care systems. This paper proposes a model for improving how we develop and deploy information technology. The authors focus on trends in people, organizational, and social issues (POI/OSI), which are becoming more complex as both health care [...]

The contention of the author is that an informatics infrastructure is essential for evidenced-based practice. Five building blocks of an informatics infrastructure for evidence-based practice are proposed: 1) standardized terminologies and structures, 2) digital sources of evidence, 3) standards that facilitate health care data exchange among heterogeneous systems, 4) informatics processes that support the acquisition and application of evidence to a specific clinical situation, and 5) informatics competencies. Selected examples [...]

To examine the type of information obtainable from scientific papers, using three different methods for the extraction, organization, and preparation of literature reviews.

The paper describes T/Gen, a prototype computer-based tool designed to help maintain the knowledge in a computer-based clinical practice guideline that provides patient-specific recommendations. T/Gen takes as input a set of clinical conditions to which a guideline must react, and allows the user to specify domain-specific constraints as to which combinations of conditions do not make sense or do not need to be exhaustively tested against one another. T/Gen automatically [...]

To analyze whether computer-generated reminders about infections could influence clinicians' practice patterns and consequently improve the detection and management of nosocomial infections.

To explore the feasibility of using the National Library of Medicine's Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Metathesaurus as the basis for a computational strategy to identify concepts in medical narrative text preparatory to indexing. To quantitatively evaluate this strategy in terms of true positives, false positives (spuriously identified concepts) and false negatives (concepts missed by the identification process).

The paper provides an overview of neuroinformatics research at Yale University being performed as part of the national Human Brain Project. This research is exploring the integration of multidisciplinary sensory data, using the olfactory system as a model domain. The neuroinformatics activities fall into three main areas: 1) building databases and related tools that support experimental olfactory research at Yale and can also serve as resources for the field as [...]