Integrating Information for Medical Decision Support and Education: A Model for Other Knowledge Domains

Stanford Health Information Network for Education (SHINE) integrates online guideline texts, textbooks, journals, biblio graphic systems, medical images, digital video, relational databases, and knowledge-based sy stems, which were formerly accessible individually through the Z39.50 protocol, SQL language, HTTP protocol, and full-text search engines. We introduce the architecture that is used to integrate these distributed heterogeneous systems and allows presentation of re sources with non-overlapping content as if they were a single volume. We explain how th e system will be integrated with electronic medical record systems to support medica l decisions. We also discuss SHINE's electronic notebook, and log recording systems that make SHINE a complete system that supports medical decision making and learning. The same concepts can be applied to aggregation of knowledge domains to optimize the fu nctions of other (non-medical) target users.