A hypermedia document collection for primary care: why, what, and how?

  • Authors:

  • Toomas Timpka;Per Hedblom;Gösta Tibblin

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University, S - 581 83 Linköping, Sweden and Department of Community Medicine, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden;Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University, S - 581 83 Linköping, Sweden and Department of Community Medicine, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden;Department of Family Medicine, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

  • Venue:
  • Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
  • Year:
  • 1990

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Abstract

This paper discusses Gosta's book, a hypermedia document collection for support of diagnosis in primary care, from three aspects: motivation, use, and development method. We show that there are strong parallels between the analytic methods used by a General Practitioner and a scholar in the humanities, for instance, in history. Diagnosis in primary care is suggested to be context-dependent and based on multiple sources, and the diagnostic process to be one of interpretation and explanation of all available information and synthesis of biopsychosocial arguments. Since hypermedia has showed to be useful in the humanities, it is suggested to be relevant for diagnosis support in primary health care as well. The authoring of a hypermedia collection is described as a continuous process, where three steps are iterated: content authoring, structure editing, and systems implementation. The structure editing includes the authoring of overview nodes and guided tours through the collection. Overview nodes define a document in the collection by both describing a problem area and linking to all basic text nodes related to the area. Authoring of these navigation aids is integrated with structure editing and has to be performed by the content and structure authors together. The resulting collection is divided into 22 hypermedia documents, consisting of 500 basic text objects and connected by 3000 links.