On integrating hypermedia into decision support and other information systems

The goal of this research is to provide hypermedia functionality to all information systems that interact with people. Hypermedia is a concept involving access to information, embodying the notions of context-sensitive navigation, annotation and tailored presentation. This paper presents the architecture of a system-level hypermedia engine, designed both to manage full hypermedia functionality for an information system and to bind interface-oriented front-end systems with separate computation-oriented back-end systems. The engine dynamically superimposes a hypermedia representation over a back-end application's knowledge components and processes. The hypermedia engine generates this representation using bridge laws, which capture the internal structure of client systems. Users access the application through its hypermedia representation. The paper also describes a set of minimal requirements for integrating the hypermedia engine with an information system. These guidelines apply to all integration efforts, not just that described here. Information systems will require some supplementary routines for the engine to manage hypermedia functionality for them. The more sophisticated and cooperative the information system, the higher the level of hypermedia support the engine will provide.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

On integrating hypermedia into decision support and other information systems

The goal of this research is to provide hypermedia functionality to all information systems that interact with people. Hypermedia is a concept involving access to information, embodying the notions of context-sensitive navigation, annotation and tailored presentation. This paper presents the architecture of a system-level hypermedia engine, designed both to manage full hypermedia functionality for an information system and to bind interface-oriented front-end systems with separate computation-oriented back-end systems. The engine dynamically superimposes a hypermedia representation over a back-end application's knowledge components and processes. The hypermedia engine generates this representation using bridge laws, which capture the internal structure of client systems. Users access the application through its hypermedia representation. The paper also describes a set of minimal requirements for integrating the hypermedia engine with an information system. These guidelines apply to all integration efforts, not just that described here. Information systems will require some supplementary routines for the engine to manage hypermedia functionality for them. The more sophisticated and cooperative the information system, the higher the level of hypermedia support the engine will provide.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

Idea Analysis for the Development of Clinical Trial Strategies

Idea Analysis was investigated to determine its ability to organize scientific information and explain the results of specialists\u27 deliberations in designing new clinical trials. Ideas have long been recognized as the engine of creativity. By focusing on the capture of ideas from the scientific literature, idea analysis procedures enable the arrangement of the information into forms consistent with those developed by subject specialists. The most obvious example is the concept structure. Ideas containing a common frequently occurring term/phrase can be depicted as a primary node in the concept network. Related terms will appear as elements associated with that node. Ideas containing couplets of primary nodal terms/phrases can be used to link nodes, thus, completing the paths in the network. Using this methodology, information specialists can build and maintain knowledge structures for use by students, subject specialists and interested others. In contrast with expert systems, idea analysis does not attempt to duplicate thought processes performed by experts in a subject. Instead, it focuses on the management of ideas and the arrangement of those ideas using organizational models. The application of these techniques to the scientific literature dealing with brain tumors and to clinical trial protocols developed by subject specialists is illustrative. This study showed that, in the brain tumor literature and clinical trial protocols, the idea analysis approach was effective in accomplishing the two tasks required: 1. Organization of complex material into succinct and understandable descriptions--tabular and graphic; 2. provision of explanations of expert-derived research strategies and/or plans. This methodology enhanced identification, extraction, computerization and incorporation of ideas into knowledge structures in an efficient and effective manner