Verifying a medical protocol with temporal graphs: The case of a nosocomial disease

Objective: Our contribution focuses on the implementation of a formal verification approach for medical protocols with graphical temporal reasoning paths to facilitate the understanding of verification steps. Materials and methods: Formal medical guideline specifications and background knowledge are represented through conceptual graphs, and reasoning is based on graph homomorphism. These materials explain the underlying principles or rationale that guide the functioning of verifications. Results: An illustration of this proposal is made using a medical protocol defining guidelines for the monitoring and prevention of nosocomial infections. Such infections, which are acquired in the hospital, increasemorbidity andmortality and add noticeably to economic burden. An evaluation of the use of the graphical verification found that this method aids in the improvement of both clinical knowledge and the quality of actions made. Discussion: As conceptual graphs, representations based on diagrams can be translated into computational tree logic. However, diagrams are much more natural and explicitly human, emphasizing a theoretical and practical consistency. Conclusion: The proposed approach allows for the visualmodeling of temporal reasoning and a formalization of knowledge that can assist in the diagnosis and treatment of nosocomial infections and some clinical problems. This is the first time that one emphasizes the temporal situation modeling in conceptual graphs. It will also deliver a formal verification method for clinical guideline analyses

Using conceptual graphs for clinical guidelines representation and knowledge visualization

The intrinsic complexity of the medical domain requires the building of some tools to assist the clinician and improve the patient’s health care. Clinical practice guidelines and protocols (CGPs) are documents with the aim of guiding decisions and criteria in specific areas of healthcare and they have been represented using several languages, but these are difficult to understand without a formal background. This paper uses conceptual graph formalism to represent CGPs. The originality here is the use of a graph-based approach in which reasoning is based on graph-theory operations to support sound logical reasoning in a visual manner. It allows users to have a maximal understanding and control over each step of the knowledge reasoning process in the CGPs exploitation. The application example concentrates on a protocol for the management of adult patients with hyperosmolar hyperglycemic state in the Intensive Care Unit

Experienced knowledge for the description of maintenance packages

The presented work is included in the research theme that specifies some means of capitalization and exploitation of knowledge from experience feedback processes in the context of industrial maintenance management. Our research on it is a more precise definition of the proposed project, built with a problem asking how to handle the management of repair packages. Upstream, the knowledge of various experts are materialized in the form of expert reports. Downstream maintenance wants to quickly repair products based on symptoms or change parts in advance. For this, we propose a methodology by analysing the feedback to improve the response time for maintenance services. This is implemented in the context of a manufacturing traction motors for the railway industry

User-centered visual analysis using a hybrid reasoning architecture for intensive care units

One problem pertaining to Intensive Care Unit information systems is that, in some cases, a very dense display of data can result. To ensure the overview and readability of the increasing volumes of data, some special features are required (e.g., data prioritization, clustering, and selection mechanisms) with the application of analytical methods (e.g., temporal data abstraction, principal component analysis, and detection of events). This paper addresses the problem of improving the integration of the visual and analytical methods applied to medical monitoring systems. We present a knowledge- and machine learning-based approach to support the knowledge discovery process with appropriate analytical and visual methods. Its potential benefit to the development of user interfaces for intelligent monitors that can assist with the detection and explanation of new, potentially threatening medical events. The proposed hybrid reasoning architecture provides an interactive graphical user interface to adjust the parameters of the analytical methods based on the users' task at hand. The action sequences performed on the graphical user interface by the user are consolidated in a dynamic knowledge base with specific hybrid reasoning that integrates symbolic and connectionist approaches. These sequences of expert knowledge acquisition can be very efficient for making easier knowledge emergence during a similar experience and positively impact the monitoring of critical situations. The provided graphical user interface incorporating a user-centered visual analysis is exploited to facilitate the natural and effective representation of clinical information for patient care

Conceptual graph operations for formal visual reasoning in the medical domain

International audienceObjective - Conceptual graphs (CGs) are used to represent clinical guidelines because they support visual reasoning with a logical background, making them a potentially valuable representation for guidelines.Materials and methods - Conceptual graph formalism has an essential and basic component: a formal vocabulary that drives all of the other mechanisms, notably specialization and projection. The graph's theoretical operations, such as projection, rules, derivation, constraints, probabilities and uncertainty, support diagrammatic reasoning.Results - A conceptual graph's graphical user interface includes a multilingual vocabulary management, some query and decision-making facilities and visual graph representations that are simple and interesting for user interactions. The described proposition using the Conceptual Graph user interface (CoGui) improves the performance of the actors in the diagnostic context of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction.Discussion - CGs capture the essential features of the medical processes underlying clinical reasoning. CGs are indeed useful as a way for the physician to represent guidelines, and well-defined semantic representations allow users to have a maximal understanding of the knowledge reasoning process.Conclusion - CG operations of visual representations that uncover some of the actual complexities of clinicians’ reasoning have been tested in clinical guideline comprehension and used to translate text and diagrammatic guidelines into computer interpretable representations

Knowledge engineering approach for the analysis of viticulture

International audienceThe sustainable development of agricultural regions requires a methodical approach that will make a viable land management system policy in practice. In this regard, distinctive contextual characteristics of a country (remarkable areas for raising the regional products) could be taken into account in order to promote the good character of agricultural outputs and to increase the added value of considered lands. The manuscript primarily describes in qualitative and quantitative terms a mechanism for synthesizing information about wine production characteristics and therefore provides sufficient substantive treatment of agricultural or other system interactions. Firstly, the manuscript presents a discussion about many factors that affect wine production, and secondly, the focus is more on the development of an integrated approach using numerical and symbolic reasoning. The Geoviticulture Multicriteria Climatic Classification (MCC) System is engaged with a methodology comprising three viticultural climatic indexes of different natures: hydric type (dryness index), heliothermal type (Huglin index), and Nictothermal type (Cold Night Index). The knowledge representation is symbolized with the conceptual graphs formalism and the reasoning mechanisms are based on graph operations. A visual reasoning development focuses more on the decision process that would seem more appropriate for a practice on decision support. In addition, the Decision Support System (DSS) component is illustrated with a case study of Croatia republic in very broad characterizations of its main regional grape varieties