Object-oriented development of a concept learning system for time-centered clinical data.

A concept learning system is expected to be a powerful tool for filtering and analyzing a large amount of data in a variety of scientific fields. A simple application of it to clinical data, however, fails to mine medical information and knowledge. One of the major obstacles in mining a clinical database is time, which is a very important concept in clinical medicine. To be successful in data mining in clinical medicine, an efficient model of clinical data with time and a flexible concept learning system augmented to handle the model are both necessary. Herein we modeled clinical data to easily express and manipulate time and extended a concept learning system to utilize a time-centered clinical data model. The modified concept learning system is based on the message-value method rather than the traditional attribute-value method. The object-oriented technology was of great help in modeling time-centered clinical data and in developing a modified concept learning system.