Notes
Outline
Modelling clinical goals
A corpus of examples and a tentative ontology
John Fox 1, Alyssa Alabassi1,2, Elizabeth Black1,
Chris Hurt1, Tony Rose1
1Advanced Computation Laboratory, Cancer Research UK
2Guy’s Hospital Breast Unit, London
Modelling clinical goals
Models of goals: why and how
Goals in PROforma
Armchair ontology of goals
Some proposals for goal models
A corpus of examples (breast cancer)
Revised ontology & goal model
Conclusions
CREDO model of cancer care
“ A simple, flexible model”
(with apologies to Gunther Schadow)
Why are goals important?
Understanding the clinical process
Rationale of clinical tasks  (Shahar)
Critiquing, quality assessment (Advani)
Management of clinical workflow
Recovery from task failure
Tasks become irrelevant/inappropriate
Defractalisation of acts
Goals and tasks in PROforma
“ A simple, flexible model”
(with apologies to Gunther Schadow)
Goal ontology (version 1)
q Knowledge goals
          Decide between alternative hypotheses about world
·          Detect e.g: presence/absence an abnormality
·          Classify e.g: which of N possible conditions is present
·          Stratify e.g: level of risk
·          Predict: e.g. diagnosis, prognosis
  Acquire information about setting
q Action goals
          Achieve
·          Eradicate e.g: eradicate an infectious organism
·          Create e.g: create a sterile site
          Control
·          Prevent e.g: prevent side-effect of a treatment
·          Limit e.g: maintain physiological parameter within limits
          Communicate
·          Enquire e.g: request an appointment
·          Inform e.g: tell colleague results of test
Properties of goals
Shahar (1998)
Whether the intention is to achieve, maintain or avoid a situation;
Whether the intention refers to a clinical state or action;
Whether the intention holds during care (intermediate) or after it has been completed  (overall)
Properties of goals
Hashmi, Boxwala et al (2004)
Context in which goal is relevant
Target e.g. state of disease or disorder
Verb that specifies whether the target is to be achieved, avoided, etc
Temporal constraints.
Priority of the goal
“Formal” properties of goals
Winikoff et al (2002)
Known, goals must be explicit
Consistent, goals must not conflict
Persistent, while success conditions not satisfied
Unachieved, drop as soon as satisfied
Possible, abandon if impossible
Improving the ontology
A large corpus of examples would help to identify the range of functions supported by goals
Systematic classification of the examples would help to understand the main goal types and semantics
CREDO provides one domain for developing such a corpus
CREDO model of cancer care
CREDO service description:
triple assessment
Clinical services
Decision support (investigations, follow up, genetic risk)
Tracking results and investigations.
Management of follow up or discharge
Patient services
Personalised schedules
Communication services
Notifying physician of results, management, discharge plan
Notifying patient of results and management plan.
Inviting patients for follow up and investigations.
Review of CREDO corpus
against Shahar model
Review of CREDO corpus against Hashmi, Boxwala model
Revised ontology
Knowledge goals
o        Acquire knowledge about specific setting [15 instances]
§        …
o        Decide between alternative hypotheses about the world [52 instances]
§          Detect
§          Classify
        …
§          Predict
…
Action goals
o        Achieve some state of world [65 instances]
§          Limit changes to current state
§          Bring about required future state
       …
§          Decide between alternative interventions
…
o         Enact tasks [90 instances]
§          Arrange service
§          Investigate
§          Communicate
Consensus model?
<Situation>
Context (Hashmi)
Scenarios (e.g. Prodigy)
Triggers and preconditions (e.g. PROforma)
<Verb phrase><Noun phrase>
Task, Focus (Huang et al)
Verb, Object (Fox et al)
Verb, Target (Hashmi et al)
Verb phrase, Noun phrase (Kelly, safety goals)
Performative, message (KQML, FIPA)
<Constraints>
Temporal (Shahar, Hashmi)
Scheduling (Peleg et al)
Cost and other resources?
Other requirements?
<Control>
Priority (Hashmi)
Urgency, importance, deontic
Example
“if a patient presents with symptoms of possible breast cancer then it is obligatory that the patient is referred to see a specialist oncologist within two weeks”
Example
<Situation>
<Verb phrase>
<Noun phrase>
<Constraints>
<Priority>
if  patient presents with symptoms of possible breast cancer
refer patient
specialist oncologist
within two weeks
obligatory
Conclusions
Guideline enactment systems should explicitly support clinical goals and intentions
Several existing attempts to model goals have yielded proposals for possible structures and semantics
Analysis of a corpus of examples in the domain of breast cancer suggests further refinements
Analysis of other typical corpora would yield further refinements