VINSIA: Visual Navigator for Surgical Information Access
GQ Zhang1, PhD, Lingyun Luo1, PhD, James Rowbottom2, MD, John Craker2, MSN, Rong Xu1, PhD
1Case Western Reserve University, 2University Hospitals Case Medical Center, OH 44106
Abstract
We present a graphical, anatomy-driven navigation
interface called VINSIA for information delivery at the
point of care. VINSIA has been developed by expanding
Semantic MediaWiki (SMW [1]) to organize and classify
information using four axes: Anatomy, Location, Topic
and User. These axes provide the building blocks for
faceted information access: any content item in VINSIA
can be accessed through any facet with limited need for
entering a search term. Preliminary testing of a pilot site
demonstrates the feasibility and advantages of VINSIA
for high-precision, quick navigation to targeted content
items.
Another way to get information in specific categories are by
Category Search, as illustrated in Figure 5 below:
1. Click heart area
Figure 5: Category search
2. Cleck the Cardiac Valves picture
Extension
3. Click Aortic valve
Except for Heart, the same procedure can be extended to other
anatomies, Below is the Lungs page:
4. Select topic
"Clinical Management"
Methods
Information in VINSIA is categorized into four axes:
Anatomy, Location, Topic and User. The Anatomy axis
captures the anatomical hierarchy based e.g. on FMA. The
Location axis captures physical locations in a hospital setting
where the information is used or needed. The Topic
axis captures the specific types of information. Finally the
User axis captures a hierarchy of user permissions for
access control.
We use Semantic MediaWiki [1] as the background
framework for implementing the axes.
For example, to access contents specifically
on aortic valve, one clicks the “heart” on the
“human body”, followed by the click
sequence “cardiac valves” → “aortic
valve”→ “clinical management” (Figure 2).
This access mode only involves mouse
clicking without any typing.
Figure 6: Lungs page
Location
Figure 2: Anatomy Navigation System
VINSIA provides a high-precision, visual, anatomy based
navigation interface for clinicians in perioperative and critical care
environments. The efficiency of VINSIA is measured by the total
number of primitive computer interactions (key strokes and
mouse drags or clicks). VINSIA is also semanticdriven because
of its Semantic MediaWiki implementation environment. Importing
high quality content into VINSIA is a critical prerequisite for
fulfilling its function. To support this, VINSIA provides an
interactive interface for qualified users to upload contents and tag
them with categories in every facet.
Anatomy
Information
Upload
Information
Access
Topic
References
User
Management
[1] http://www.semantic-mediawiki.org
[2] Clinical Reference Sources at the Point of Care, Has the
Dream been realized? AMIA 2010 Annual Symposium
Roundtable.
User Log In
System
Figure 1: Structure
Conclusion
Figure 3: Categories
Figure 4: Upload file to different categories