Matching Patients: An Approach for Decision Support in Liver Transplantation

Clinical research often is based on matching of identical patterns in patient courses. The LTX system is designed to support clinical research and decisions for the post-opera­ tive care of liver transplant patients by identifying "simi­ lar" patient courses. The basic idea is a frame representa­ tion of each day in a patient's course including historical information. On top of this we constructed a time oriented language to represent clinical concepts like "high bilirubin level over 4 days". The system is implemented on a PC, where an integration into the hospital information system is essential (identification via MHH-identif~cati on number, connection to the lab compu­ ter to get the patients' lab data, etc.).