Integrating Medical Patient Data with Family Trees to Improve the Quality of Information

Abstract

AbstractThe way patient information is presented has been proven to have an important impact on patient care. This paper presents a software component to be integrated in a virtual patient record used in a Portuguese hospital. This component supports genetic oncology consultations and aims to help the physician needs to visualize the patient’s family tree in order to diagnose hereditary cancers in both patient and patient descendants. This system allows the physician to view relevant medical information of the elements of the family of a given patient, add new tests, as well as record new cancer situations that occur in any member of the patient’s family. Besides the graphical display of the patients’ family tree, the system also allows to differentiate between different groups of cancer by using symbols and colours, register new cancer occurrences within that family network, as well as information related to tests performed by them.KeywordsGene OntologyElectronic Patient RecordHereditary CancerUnify Medical Language SystemFamily TreeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.