Medical Information Network Decision Support System

Army Research Laboratory

Thursday, October 01 2009

In order to facilitate a more rapid and systematic transfer of new medical knowledge and capabilities into mainstream clinical practice, a new Medical Information Network Decision Support (MINDS) system has been proposed. This system is intended to be a platform for storing and fusing medical data across all levels (e.g. from low-level genomic and proteomic data to higher level clinical data) in a standardized way.

The general software framework upon which the decision support architecture is built is a modular system that provides the ability to interface MINDS with other systems and tools. Each module may consist of several individual packages that can be included to form a particular application. Modules are reused among applications that have similar functions. The modules of the system are utilized within an application flow diagram that can be utilized in fusing data sources and generating appropriate data models.

The system architecture will support an initial prototype of both a research tool (used to support development models) and a support tool (used to provide decision support summaries to doctors). The modularity of the system is further enhanced by the definition of different software layers that allow higher level processing to be isolated from the lower level messaging and network interface protocols. This has the advantage of allowing the system to be more easily connected to other systems that may utilize different communications or messaging protocols without having to modify the basic data processing elements.

This work was done by H.K. (John) Armenian of TechFinity, Inc. for the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command. ARL-0058