A Computerized Information System for Pathology

Abstract

This paper describes a Computerized Information System for Pathology (CISP) capable of storing, retrieving and correlating essential information in pathology reports.Reports are entered in text form using established diagnostic terms recognizable in the system’s dictionary. Although some pre-editing of the report may be necessary, the comprehensive dictionary minimizes this effort. Dictionaries provide the vocabulary for a language which enables an economic storage of essential information in a compact and easily retrievable form. Reports and dictionaries stored on disk form the system’s data base.CISP consists of a set of modules shared by a, number of specific load module programs which store reports, retrieve them, and process requests. The system was programmed in PL/I on the IBM 360/75 OS computer system. CISP is operated from terminals situated in hospitals.

A Computerized Coding System for Processing Basic Histopathological Changes – Application to Vascular Pathology

“…The coding system presented in this paper shows some advantages over those reported by others, mainly because it makes it possible to store each histopathological finding in five bytes, allowing to record a large number of information in a relatively small space of memory. A second advantage is that our code can be integrated with other coding systems, such as the SNOP [4] and the SNOMed [10], when a more analytical description of the tissue-pathological changes is needed. In addition, all of the possible associations between the variables under study can easily be analized by statistical programs.…”

“…In recent years, several systems have been developed for processing histopathological data utilizing different coding systems. Among the most widely used codes are: SNOP (Systematized Nomenclature of Pathology) [4], the most widely used, is based on the grouping of the diagnostic sentences into four categories according to the topography (T), the morphology (M), the etiology (E) and the altered function (F); SNOMed (Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine) representing a revision and extension of the SNOP system to the medical field including two additional categories, one for• syndromes and complex diseases (D) and the second for administrative and therapeutic procedures (P); CISP (Computerized Information System for Pathology) [10] storing the cytological, autoptical and surgical reports using established diagnostic terms recognizable in the system's dictionary; H-ICDA [1], a system which classifies diagnoses according to the topographical regions Rome, Italy) .…”

MIRACLE: A Time-oriented Data Validation and Analysis System for Clinical Research

“…The file structure is a key issue for clinical information systems [31]. Data-base management systems are in use [1,18,20], tree structures [3], problem-oriented structures [27], time-oriented structures [7,10,31], text-oriented files [2,14] and rectangular files [8,12]. For registries of chronic diseases like malignant tumors, the time-oriented structure is most appropriate [24,25].…”

Computer-Linked Memorandum of Pathology System (CLIMPS 7909) for Interactive Storage and Analysis of Surgical Pathology Data

“…A sequence of the processes that is flexible enough to meet users' demands also is an important fea• ture. Other factors that lower the threshold of man• machine interface and thus encourage pathologists would include (I) immediate accessibility of the data base [2,4,5,19,20,29], (2) interactive dialogue that permits machine•assisted operation [6,10,14,15,19,20], (3) storage of the essential minimum information, resorting to hand•written documents for details, (4) ease of cor• rection and updating of data, (5) automatic coding capability which eliminates need for coding by hand of diagnostic terms [S,10,16,IS,20,21,2S,30], and (6) workability frOIn the very begiruling without prelinlinary construction of a thesaurus for coding. The speed of data acquisition and the number of records that can be stored are of secondary importance.…”