Modern Medical Information Retrieval Systems : A Review

Kalana Eranda Jayasuriya
8 min readJan 21, 2020

Introduction

Nowadays, information retrieval systems are viral and very useful to peoples seeking answers to their problems and managing their time. Medical information retrieval systems are one of the critical systems out of other retrieval systems. Those are very important for doctors, patients, and all who are related to the medical side. If someone searches for medical information in WWW (World Wide Web), they can get more than a thousand results related and non-related to your topic there for you will find it challenging to get the most helpful answer to your question. If someone can access a system that is only stored medical information, they can get the exact result for what they have searched. Not only information, but people can also search for images, videos, journals, articles, Etc. However, before the 20s, all medical information was stored in papers and books. That kind of storage was hazardous because those couple of storage can easily be destroyed and difficult to store in the perfect condition in much space. In that period, people take much time to find information that they want, and many medical students stuck in libraries most of the day. Before the 80s, most medical types of equipment were not invented. Therefore, doctors could not find most of the diseases that patients are suffering (e.g., -: CT Scanners, PET Scanners, Etc.). They could not have to collect information about inner diseases that patients are suffering because those medical equipment types are not invented yet. Therefore, doctors could not find a cure for most diseases. However, after the evaluation of Information systems, a lot of medical types of equipment are invented. Therefore, doctors could gather information about many diseases and found many cures for that. Furthermore, they were able to store all details in the information system.

Those systems cannot be quickly destroyed. Furthermore, it did not take much space to store details. Moreover, search information and update information are straightforward with these modern systems. Therefore, most patients can find their cure easily and meet any doctor instance they like. Students and researchers can find any information which helps their education and invent new knowledge for the industry.

Common ideas

This section is about same ideas that suggested by different researches.

Study of [1], [2], [3], one of the best essential options is the language-based search option and language translate option when searching for medical information. That is a handy feature for non-English speaking peoples. When someone wants to search for medical details in a different language, they will be able to select their language in the search bar, and they can search for anything according to their language, but if someone cannot get results in the native language, they find it challenging to understand the concepts and contents. Therefore, medical information retrieval introduces a page translation option. When someone gets English results, they will translate that page to their native language by page translation option.

Study of [3], [4], over time, a lot of medical equipment types were invented. These equipment types are used to study the humans’ inner body and find cures for diseases researched purposes, Etc. On the hospital side, doctors use X-Ray, CT Scanners, Pet scanners, Etc., to find humans’ hidden diseases and find other body issues. Researchers use these equipment types to find new cures, new technologies, new knowledge, Etc. After checking with these types of equipment, the monitor screen displays some information that wants. Some equipment shows information as images, and some are showing information as text, some are showing information (e.g., X-Ray — images, Blood test — as text, Pet Scanners — as videos).

Study of [5], [6], [8], most medical information is stored in databases as an individual. For example, when American researchers find new medical technology, they stored that detail in their storage system. International students cannot get information and cannot study that technology for educational purposes, and Doctors cannot use it for medical treatments. However, modern systems provide a medical network layer to peoples who are interested in new knowledge, new technology, Etc. A medical network means a collection of individual medical information systems. This technology provides people access to any information that they want. This method very helpful for low resource counties’ students to study their subjects. That also helps doctors to study new medical treatments, which are high-level countries use.

Different ideas

This section is about unique ideas that are from different researchers.

Study of [7], medical types of information are compassionate information. Therefore, peoples always seek correct and professional information. Discussion panels are one of the best ways to collect 100% correct details. When students, researchers, doctors, Etc, find out any issue in their field, they can ask for answers or information from professionals from the discussion panel. They can also write opinions about some fields and get others’ opinions to improve their knowledge. Sometimes peoples cannot get exact answers by searching. At that time, they can get their answers from these Discussion panels. Another advantage is that a patient can get their medicine by asking professionals.

Study of [5], when you search for medical information, you will sometimes find it challenging to explain what details you want. In that case, the medical search system provides a “Similar-to Link” mechanism to recognize what people want. This mechanism reads the input of people and transforms that into a query. Then the mechanism gets unique attributes from their search and gets results related to those attributes. After that, it suggests all the results, and can find and select what you are looking for. After clicking it, the system displays all the results that want. This facility is beneficial for patients and students.

Sometimes when people search for any details, there can be no answer to their question. In that case, medical information retrieval provides them with a cooperative database system (CoBase) to help find answers. CoBase is a tree structure which is called Type Abstraction Hierarchy (TAH). This method helps to find similar closet answers to asked questions. Then anyone can get critical ideas from those results, and they can construct answers that they want.

Study of [6], Overtime technology is improving because of successful researches. When medical services were improving, researchers always follow some steps:

  1. Dividing the chosen service into part based on their functionalities.
  2. Examining that function’s weaknesses, performance, Etc.
  3. After that, producing the most suitable upgrade or updates for those issues.
  4. Developing and applying the patch to those services.

After those steps, we can experience better systems services than before.

My ideas

In these information retrieval systems, one of the critical problems in search engines is not supporting every language, and page translation not worked correctly. When someone translates a page, document, journal, Etc., to another language, it exactly did not translate correctly. Sometimes it gives different meanings that are not correct. Therefore, we need an improved translation system and new language updates. Third world countries are the most suffering from these issues. If researches and scientists develop that systems world can get more knowledge because some intelligent peoples can communicate with native language.

When we admit to a hospital, hospital staff and nurses get personal details and body condition details. Public and Government both hospitals are following this method. If we can connect these divided details into one database, we can get a patient’s full report. With the help of Data Mining, we can predict the future health report of a patient. There are many advantages to knowing the future:

  1. The patient can protect himself by knowing the upcoming dangers.
  2. Doctors can pre-prepared for upcoming issues.
  3. Researchers and scientists can get help with their surveys.

Likewise, there are many advantages to using data mining for medical information retrieval.

When retrieving medical information, people can get information from videos. Videos can download from streaming sites. The video-based methods are one of the main advantages of information retrieving. Most of the professionals use these methods for teaching amateurs. Another advantage is that people can discuss with professionals and other peoples who are interested in this. This method saves everyone reading time and practical time.

Furthermore, live streaming is one of the best communication methods to gather knowledge. At that time, people can ask their questions and get the answer at the same time. If someone gives misleading details, people can review that video in the comment section. Therefore, anyone cannot trick others on the streaming side. The main disadvantage is that there are many misleading videos on streaming sites. Therefore, everyone will find it challenging to find the right answer from a bunch of videos.

When searching for information, some peoples find it difficult to use the information retrieval system. Patients are the most kind who face this difficulty. If we invent and introduce new medical assistance with voice communication, most peoples (mostly blind peoples) can use this facility without hesitation. Most people can then tell their problems in voice messages, and assistants understand and give the related results that patients want. This kind of assistance must have invented, and developers must improve that assistance to recognized different languages. This Technique will be beneficial to modern society.

One of the useful features in medical information retrieval is “online medical schools.” These courses help students who cannot afford much money to go abroad and follow medical courses. Nowadays they can follow these kinds of courses from their native country with spending a few amounts of money. Some courses are money base courses, and some are free courses. There is no risk of following these courses because professionals conduct every course.

Conclusion

So far, we have discussed similar ideas about medical information retrieval from different peoples. Moreover, we talk about different ideas from different peoples. Finally, we talk about “my point of view” about this retrieval. We can see people have many features to introduce and many ideas about the medical information retrieval system. That proves how important these kinds of retrievals for modern society. You can see that every humankind needs these kinds of systems because every person suffers from one of the diseases at least one more time. Then every people need these kinds of systems.

Moreover, we saw how this retrieval helps the educational side. We prove that most students, researchers, Etc., cannot continue their studies and research without this. Therefore, these retrievals help you to construct your future politely. As well as we proved these systems help you to find professionals whom we cannot meet adequately. Finally, you have learned what new technologies and features we can apply to these retrievals, and we learn what weaknesses these systems have.

Bibliography

[1] M. Yi, “Effective medical resources searching using an ontology‐driven medical information retrieval system”, The Electronic Library, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 248–263, 2012. Available: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/02640471211221368/full/html

[2] L. Goeuriot, L. Kelly, G. Jones, H. Müller and J. Zobel, “Report on the SIGIR 2014 Workshop on Medical Information Retrieval (MedIR)”, ACM SIGIR Forum, vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 78–82, 2014. Available: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2701583.2701592

[3] A. Mourão, F. Martins and J. Magalhães, “Multimodal medical information retrieval with unsupervised rank fusion”, Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics, vol. 39, pp. 35–45, 2015. Available: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24909951/

[4] P. Shamna, V. Govindan and K. Abdul Nazeer, “Content based medical image retrieval using topic and location model”, Journal of Biomedical Informatics, vol. 91, p. 103112, 2019. Available: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1532046419300309

[5] W. Chu, D. Johnson and H. Kangarloo, “A medical digital library to support scenario and user-tailored information retrieval”, IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 97–107, 2000. Available: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/845202

[6] Nong Chen and A. Dahanayake, “Rethinking of Medical Information Retrieval and Access”, IDEAS Workshop on Medical Information Systems: The Digital Hospital (IDEAS-DH’04). Available: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1410525

[7] C. Teixeira Lopes and C. Ribeiro, “Comparative evaluation of web search engines in health information retrieval”, Online Information Review, vol. 35, no. 6, pp. 869–892, 2011. Available: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/14684521111193175/full/html

[8] L. Goeuriot, G. Jones, L. Kelly, H. Müller and J. Zobel, “Medical information retrieval: introduction to the special issue”, Information Retrieval Journal, vol. 19, no. 1–2, pp. 1–5, 2016. Available: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10791-015-9277-8

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Kalana Eranda Jayasuriya

Software Engineer at Kodez | Former Research Analyst at CoinGuru | Specialize in Data Science