Results

Below is the summary from the evaluation report.

Purpose

Clinicians have responsibilities for audit and research, often participating in projects with colleagues in basic science. Whilst e-Scientists and e-Clinicians would ideally share different perspectives of the same virtual working environments, differences in language, conflicting agendas and security issues make it a major challenge to relate information from bench to bedside and back to bench. Our approach is to initiate a transition to service oriented architecture and use Grid technologies to minimise relearning and reengineering
In the Collaborative Orthopaedic Research Environment (CORE) project(1), we report on a pilot study for proof of concept of this work. Users are mapped to a personal profile, implemented using XML and a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) (2;3) demonstrate the ability to provide a secure working environment for data collection and analysis that may be used for research clinical production and practice, thus bridging the e-Health and e-Science domains.

Methods

To enhance access and control of these virtual workspaces an eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML) based interface has been developed. This links the clinical data collection from ongoing trials in Orthopaedics to the educational environment of the Web Based Training (WBT) scheme. The underlying Collaborative Orthopaedic Research Environment (CORE) infrastructure encompasses the normal working environment of engineers and clinicians adopting dedicated interactive media.
Adaptive hypermedia is used to associate multiple hyperlinks to the clinical data collected. The material is prepared from the actual patient operative information, integrating the data collection with the orthopaedic research modules that are generated for the advancement of orthopaedic surgery.

Results

An XML based interface enables users to communicate using material mediated for their specific needs allowing adaptive media based upon user experience and knowledge base. This combines declarative (factual) content with feedback from a clinical (procedural) case-based training and evaluation environment. By using the XML interface, we were able to cater for the different user hardware and software resources, media content and even the language of presentation, incorporated via the virtual research environment. Proof of concept involved demonstration of the system with a scenario that used clinical data collection for everyday management. This information can then be used for the collection of data for audit and research.

Conclusion

By constructing a framework based upon already established standards, we anticipate the applicability to other surgical disciplines. We also perceive this as a way of building patient specific datasets – libraries (atlases) of pathologies and of results of various interventions. This will enable the development of networking computer architectures to assist the assimilation of multiple sources and media from different basic science resources. The interface offers the opportunity to review data from orthopaedic surgical systems embedded in an educational environment that is quantitative rather than descriptive. This will ultimately help the development of data repositories for mining, providing feedback upon clinical case management. Future work should focus upon the process of patient data collection and refinement of the data analysis using grid technologies. The intention is to develop this as part of the interface for basic science integration, especially using the use of the virtual research environment for the preparation of collaborative work both at National and International levels.