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An Evaluation of a Methodology for Specification of Clinical Guidelines at Multiple Representation Levels. Student :Erez Shalom. Supervisors: Prof. Yuval Shahar Dr. Meirav Taieb-Maymon. Talk Roadmap :. Background Methods Results Conclusions Future Directions. Clinical Guidelines.
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An Evaluation of a Methodology for Specification of Clinical Guidelines at Multiple Representation Levels Student :Erez Shalom Supervisors:Prof.Yuval Shahar Dr. Meirav Taieb-Maymon
Talk Roadmap : • Background • Methods • Results • Conclusions • Future Directions
Clinical Guidelines • Textual documents describing “state of the art” patient management • A powerful method to standardize and improve the quality of medical care • Usually specify diagnostic and/or therapeutic procedures
The Need for Automation of Clinical Guidelines • Automatic support provides: • Visual specification • Search and retrieval • Application of a GL • Retrospective quality assurance • However: Most GLs are text based and electronic inaccessible at the point of care
The Required Infrastructure • A machine-comprehensible GL representation ontology (e.g., Asbru ontology) • Runtime GL application and QA tools • A preliminary engine, namely , Spock was already developed in our lab by [Young,2005] • Support for a gradual structuring of the GL (from text to an executable code)
D P P P D The Structuring Process The Guideline as a text document The Guideline as a tree of plans Regimen A In parallel Doxycline Cefotetan Involves 2 main types of knowledge: Procedural knowledge – e.g. Regimen A for administer the two medications in parallel Declarative knowledge - e.g. 2 g IV
Expert Physician Knowledge Engineer The Hybrid Representation Model Gradually structuring the GL using increasingly formal representation levels • Implemented as part of the Digital Electronic Guideline Library) DeGeL) • Used within the URUZ GL markup tool
Asbru- the Underlying Guideline-Representation Ontology Includes semantic Knowledge Roles (KRs) organized in KR-Classes such as: • Conditions KR-Class (e.g., the filtercondition, and the abort condition) • Plan-body KR-Class for the GL’s Control structures (e.g., sequential, concurrent, and repeating combinations of actions or sub-guidelines), • GL’sGoals KR-Class (e.g. process and outcome intentions), • Context KR-Class of the activities in the GL (e.g. actors, clinical-context).
Expert physician Selects “filter condition” knowledge role URUZ (I): Specification of declarative knowledge
URUZ (cont’d) :Specification of Procedural Knowledge Expert physician decomposing the GL into tree of plans
GL Specification: Core Issues • Expert Physicians (EPs) - Knowledge Engineers (KEs) collaboration • Incremental Specification • Treatment of Multiple Ontologies • Distributed Collaboration and Sharing • Text Based Source • Knowledge Conversion
Several unresolved issues: • Definition of the necessary steps for the GL specification process • Use optimally of EPs and KEs in the process • Evaluation is crucial for quantify the markups quality • To Achieve high quality of markups there is a Need for: • An overall process of guideline specification • A complete evaluation methodology
Talk Roadmap • Background • Methods • Results • Conclusions • Future Directions
The Overall Process of Guideline Specification The activities in the markup process include three main phases : 1) Preparations before the markup activities 2) Actions during the Markup activities 3) After Markup activity
A Methodology Specification of Clinical Guidelines Creating a consensus is a crucial, mandatory step before markup
The Importance of Using an Ontology-Specific Consensus (OSC) • An OSC is a structural document that describes schematically the clinical directives of the GL • Described by the semantic of the specification ontology • Prevent disagreement and a great deal of variability among the EPs
Methodology for Creation of OSC • The OSC is created in a iterative fashion by performing the following steps • First, we create a preliminary structure of the clinical pathway • The KE adds procedural, control structure • The KE adds declarative concepts for each defined step • After some iteration of steps 2 and 3, an OSC is formed
Evaluation Design Considered some specific Criteria : • Amount of Expertise • The acquired knowledge domain • The Ontology Specific Consensuses • The Gold Standard markup for each GL • The Markups for each GL • The Evaluation of markups
Evaluation Design (cont’d) • Three GLs in different domains were used : • Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID) • Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) • Hypothyroidism(HypoThyrd)
Research Questions • Is markup feasible by EPs? • Is there a difference between the EPs editing the same GLs , and same EPs editing difference GLs? • Is there a difference between the KRs across all EPs? • Is there a difference in the amount of errors when using different OSC?
Evaluation of markups • Subjective Measures - Questionnaires were administered for finding the EPs attitude regarding the specification process • Objective Measures – intwo scales (compared to the GS): * Completeness of the markup * Correctness of the markup
The Objective Measures - Correctness • * Clinical Measure (CM)– measure the clinical correctness of the content • * Asbru Semantic Measure (ASM) - measure the semantics correctness of the content ( Asbru semantic in our case)
Resolution of Measure Mean (weighted) Quality Score (MQS) for: • GLs - to find common trends in a GL, and in all GLs • EPs - to find trends in between the markups of the EPs across the same GL and between GLs • KRs - to find trends in a specific KR type and common trends across KRs and KR classes across one markup, GL and in all GLs
The Objective Measures – Types of Errors • General errors classified into two types, and thus into two corresponding scales: • Clinical errors: • Clinical content not accurate • Clinical semantics not well specified • Clinical content not complete. • Asbru semantics errors: • Asbru semantics content not accurate • Asbru semantics content not well specified • The content does not includes mappings to standard terms • The necessary knowledge is not defined in the guideline knowledge when it should be.
The Objective Measures – Types of Errors • Specific errors for each KR Type a specific error, for example : • Conditions /Intentions KRs: • There are no And/Or operators between the different criteria. • Simple Action Plan-Body Type: • Has no text content describing the plan • Has no single atomic action semantics with clear specification and description for the action to be performed. • Plan Activation Plan-Body Type: • Plan name is not defined • Defined plan does not exist in DeGeL.
Talk Roadmap • Background • Methods • Results • Conclusions • Future Directions
Results – Subjective Measures • Non significant correlation between results 1 and 2 • Significant correlation between results 3 and 4
Number of specified plans: Measures Summary: Results – Objective measures • Mean Completeness for all markupsof EPs of 91% • All markups of EPshas significant (P<0.05) proportion of scores of 1 higher than 0.33 (some even higher then 0.75) Markup is feasible by EPs
Issue significant (P<0.05) nonsignificant (P>0.05) 1 Difference between the proportions of completeness measure between EPs editing the same GLs √ Difference in correctness measure between EPs editing the same GLs in most GLs (except the Hypo) 2 Difference in Correlation measure between EPs editing the same GLs in most GLs (except the PID) 3 Difference in correctness measure between different GLs editing the same EPs √ 4 • Any EP can perform markup with high completeness • There is wide variability between the EPs in the correctness measure with a range of [0.13,0.58] on a scale of [-1,1] Results –Difference between EPs √ √
Results – Difference between KRs There was significant difference (P<0.05) between homogenous groups of KRs EPs has difficulty to structure procedural KRs than declarative ones
Results – Types of errors The differences in total between the three GLs were highly significant in a proportion test (P<0.001) The more detailed and structured the OSC was, the lower the total number of errors committed by the EPs for each KR
Talk Roadmap • Background • Methods • Results • Conclusions • Future Directions
Four main aspects: • Creation of an Ontology-Specific Consensus (OSC) • The essential aspects needed to learn to support the specification process by EPs • The medical and computational qualifications needed for specification • The characteristics of the KA tool needed for this kind of specification
Creation of an Ontology-Specific Consensus (OSC) • Should be made as detailed as possible, including all relevant procedural and declarative concepts • The OSC is independent of the specification tool • Saving the OSCs in an appropriate digital library for re-using and sharing
The Essential Aspects Needed to Learn to Support the Specification Process by EPs • creating an OSC and performing the markups are two different tasks which require teaching two different aspects • Teaching the “difficult” KRs in particular, the procedural KRs • Short test should be administered before the EPs perform markups • A help manual and a small simulation of marking up a GL should be included in the teaching session
The Medical and Computational Qualifications Needed for Specification • Senior EPs and KEs together should work on the tasks of selecting a GL for specification and making the OSC • Any EP (senior, non-senior or a general physician) can structure the GL's knowledge in a semiformal representation completely • To specify it correctly, a more available EP should be selected, perhaps from among residents, interns or even students
The Characteristics of the KA Tool Needed for This Kind of Specification • A robust, graphical, highly usable framework is needed • More intuitive, graphic, user friendly interfaces should be used for acquiring the “difficult” KRs , especially the procedural ones • Need to bridge the gap between the initial structuring of the EP and the full semantics of the specification language GESHER - A Graphical Framework for Specification of Clinical Guidelines at Multiple Representation Levels
Limitations and Advantages of the research • Small of the number of EPs and GLs, But, in fact, 196 sub-plans and 326 KRs in total were structured by all of the EPs together in all markups • Lack of careful measurement of the required time , but, obtain more realistic results, since the interaction with most of the EPs took place in their own "playground"
Talk Roadmap • Background • Methods • Results • Conclusions • Future Directions
The GESHER’s Main Features • User friendly graphical client application • Support specification at multiple representation levels • Support to multiple specification languages (GL ontologies) • Access centralized resources such as DeGeL and a knowledge base