The general objective of the proposed research is to investigate computerized techniques for enhancing access to biomedical information. The basic mechanism to be studied is a computer interface that acts as an aid to the information seeker by helping the seeker find, connect to, and search existing systems and data bases. The computer interface permits easy access, even by computer-inexperienced and users, by providing a common language in which a user, with special instruction from the computer, can make his requests to the heterogeneous systems and data bases. The proposed work would investigate, through a series of experimental and analytical studies, how this translating-computer-interface/virtual-system approach, for which we have already demonstrated feasibility, can be applied to the biomedical area. Three specific aims of this work can be enumerated: (1) network integration and simplified use of existing heterogeneous interactive retrieval systems containing biomedical information using computer interfaces and computer-assisted instruction; (2) capabilities for augmented searching of such systems using a natural-language common-indexing and search-statement approach; and (3) considerations leading to the design of more optimum interactive biomedical information-transfer systems that would integrate functions for operations on different kinds of medical data. This work will include a series of experiments in which persons in biomedical fields will be attempting to find information they need through use of experimental interfaces.
NIH ExPorter
NIH ExPorter