Literature-related discovery techniques applied to ocular disease

Abstract

Literature-related discovery and innovation (LRDI) is a text mining approach for bridging unconnected disciplines to hypothesize radical discovery. Application to medical problems involves identifying key disease symptoms, and identifying causes and treatments for those symptoms from throughout the biomedical literature. LRDI has not been applied to vitreoretinal ophthalmological problems previously. This review illustrates the use of LRDI for potential restoration of degenerated vitreous. Vitreous restoration literature is very small; much research is aimed at vitreous composition and degradation, improving vitrectomy, and pharmacological vitreolysis. LRDI has the potential to find ways to slow, halt, or reverse the degradation through systemic improvement and myriad local treatments, some not ordinarily used by the ophthalmology community. The many potential discoveries and innovations were generated within a larger context, namely that timely healing required cause removal, healing obstacle removal, and healing acceleration (focused treatments) in an integrated manner. Although many potential causes, healing obstacles, and healing accelerations were identified strictly from the premier published literature, causes and obstacles that may have been operable but were not found in the literature were also postulated, as were gaps in the research that covered these potential causes and obstacles and unresearched treatments as well.